This Is My Last Resort
by Lexikal
Summary: Reid is kidnapped by a pair of UNSUBs who want a perfect family of "children"... except Spencer Reid is not a child. Please read internal summary for more details... Rated M just to be safe...
1. Chapter 1: A New Addition

**This is my Last Resort** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None, really, but there is a brief mention of Tobias Hankel but no spoilers for that episode.

**Warnings:** Depictions/descriptions of severe child abuse and physical/mental torture. I am told I am a rather "dark" (not emo, just too much Stephen King or something as a preschooler...) person, so please don't read if this may trigger you. However, because this is ff dot net and MA (aka NC-17) entries are not allowed, its not nearly as dark as the stuff my brain usually concocts.

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish, is taken hostage and abused along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Partially inspired by the movie "People under the Stairs", although only in spirit so it isn't a CM/People under the Stairs cross-over (there is no Alice, "Fool", Roach, etc in this story). People may think that Reid is abducted too easily, but he was taken hostage pretty easily (as far as I am concerned) by Tobias Hankel in season 2, and this is fan fiction, not real life. Also, even though Reid is intelligent and "book-smart" he does sometimes make some rather, uh, dumb errors in judgment when it comes to "real life" (at the very least, he definitely doesn't always go by the book and has quite a bit of that 'scatter-brained professor' vibe going on). Hell. Come to think of it, he gets himself into sticky situations quite often and statistically is probably "in danger" directly more than the other agents, if I had to guess; not just in "Revelations", but also in "L.D.S.K.", "Derailed", "Somebody's Watching", "Minimal Loss" etc... just to name the most obvious Reid-in-danger episodes.

**Author's note:** The title comes from the Papa Roach song of the same name. While some people may think this is similar to the episode Moseley Lane (I've only seen parts of that episode) the initial idea for this story came long before I'd seen or heard of that episode.

Please feel free to distribute, just let me know where it's going, okay? Also, I don't have a beta reader so if anyone ever wants to take on my stories/beta them for me... that would be great. On with the show...

* * *

_**Cause I'm losing my sight/Losing my mind/Wish Somebody would tell me I'm fine...-**_ _"This is my Last Resort" by Papa Roach_

"Where's Reid?" Hotch sighed, glancing around wearily. The young agent had been just behind them seconds ago. "Morgan?" Hotch inquired, glancing over at the younger man. Morgan squinted and glanced around. Shrugged.

"He was_ just_ here." Morgan said uneasily, removing his sunglasses. They'd been canvassing a local amusement park, handing out flyers with a drawing of a young man believed to be responsible for several child abductions in the last few months, and if not responsible, at least associated with the disappearances.

Hotch scowled and spun slowly around, scanning the grounds, looking for the young agent. Reid was tall, he was stronger than he looked and he was a trained FBI agent with an IQ of 187. What the hell?

"_REID_!" Hotch yelled, but there was no reply. Just the chatter of children and the cloying amusement park calliope music. Someone distantly was telling a child that they couldn't have any ice cream, and even more distantly, some child was whining because they hadn't won the right "prize". But no Reid, none of Reid's chatter as he stopped parents and asked if they'd seen their potential UNSUB, no sign of Reid period. Here one minute, gone the next.

"It is pretty packed, here." Morgan said nervously, scanning the crowd too. Maybe Reid had just gotten lost in the crowd, had wandered off to distribute more of the flyers. Today was the "BIG DAY"- the UNSUB was scheduled to take another child today, and based on Reid's predictions (which were usually accurate) from this very amusement park. And this wouldn't have been the first time Reid had taken off by himself like a puppy let off its leash, especially if excited.

Hotch grit his teeth in annoyance. When he found Reid he was going to give him one hell of a lecture. Too bad his job didn't permit more than just lectures...

"_Excuse me_," the voice was very small, almost hesitant. Hotch glanced down first, instinctively, the behaviour of a father. A small girl of about 6 was tugging at Derek Morgan's sleeve. Morgan looked down, surprised. Bent down so that he was eye level with the little girl.

"Can I help you?" He tried to smile, but his worry for Reid was making it hard to focus.

The little girl smiled back at him, tilting her head slightly, as if replaying something in her mind.

"I have to give you _this_." The child said darkly, tone changing from shy to playful in the span of a few short seconds. She handed Morgan an envelope and before he could grab her, she had bolted. Morgan lunged, but the kid was squirrelly and dodged through the crowd, under legs, and was gone.

Morgan chased after her, saw her red sweater disappear around a corner, but when he finally managed to wade through the swarm of civilians, she was gone.

"Morgan!" Hotch barked quickly, running up to his agent. Reid was missing; he didn't need Morgan getting sucked into the same trap, too. Morgan came back, breathing hard.

"A six year old girl outran _me_," Morgan said miserably. He grimaced and shook his head in disbelief.

"You didn't know she was going to bolt like that," Hotch said sternly, holding out his hand for the envelope Morgan held in his fist. Morgan nodded and forced himself to slow down his breathing. His stomach and chest felt tight, like they had when Hankel had first taken Reid.

But this was worse, somehow. A 6 year old had just delivered a message from the UNSUB, a small child. Whoever these people were, they were using small children as decoys. They were making tiny children accomplices to kidnapping... and possibly much worse.

Derek Morgan, at 6, had still been riding his big wheel and his biggest fear in the world was of the occasional monster that sometimes lived in the closet. That little girl, at the very least, was distributing a known serial killer's taunting messages to the FBI... at the very _least_. Morgan shut his eyes. They all knew that children had been taken, that some of them had been found tortured to death... but not all. Did the ones who...the ones who had obeyed... Morgan felt a little ill, but he couldn't shut his mind down, couldn't stop himself from profiling. Profiling was in his blood.

Reid wasn't one to obey, especially if it meant putting others in danger. The children who had been found murdered, according to their parents, were all very independent, even described as rebellious by some of their teachers. The children who hadn't been found had all been described as trusting, obedient, quiet._ Malleable_.

"None of the other parents reported seeing or being stopped or spoken to by a child or children, only teenage boys. This is the first time a little girl..." Prentiss was trying to make the situation better, but Morgan wouldn't hear of it. He should've just grabbed the child. Why hadn't he? If she was innocent, she wouldn't have bolted, and if she was under the UNSUB's control and he had managed to restrain her... damn it!

"Morgan, you couldn't have known." Prentiss said again.

"Let's just get back to the station. I want to describe this kid to a sketch artist while her image is still fresh in my mind," Morgan's throat felt tighter. Reid had only been gone about 5 minutes now, but time was beginning to stretch. 5 minutes without Reid meant it was less and less likely that he had wandered off or gotten lost. Especially in light of the girl and the envelope.

"We all saw her, Morgan." Hotch interrupted.

"Yeah, but I got the best look. You going to open that?" Morgan cast a glance over at Hotch. Hotch was still holding the envelope. Ideally he wanted to wait to get back to the station, to test for fingerprints, to comb over the envelope and its contents with a fine tooth comb, but if this envelope was anything like the ones that had been sent to Quantico for the last three months, there would be no evidence. Just a message.

Hotch glanced down at his watch. "It's 3:17 now. I checked my watch when I first realized Reid was gone. That was 8 minutes ago." Hotch tore the envelope open. Morgan and Prentiss gathered around.

There were a few photographs of Reid taken with a telescopic lens, real stalkerish. There was a piece of brown butcher's paper, waxed on one side. The non-waxed side had sloppy, childish printing on it, the message written with indelible black marker.

_It's time Spencer joined our family. We need a big brother._

"All this time we've been assuming that an adult UNSUB has been writing these notes... but these have always looked like notes written by children." Morgan said.

"The little girl today confirmed they are at least using children in the abduction process." Prentiss added.

"Let's just hope they only paid that kid to drop off the envelope to the adults in the dark trench coats," Hotch said stiffly, a chill running down his back. The idea that a child might have led Spencer Reid away to his...whatever was waiting for him... was unnerving to say the least. Or that the child was under the UNSUB or UNSUBs' direct control and was now returning to them? Hotch blinked the thoughts away. "It wouldn't be the first time an UNSUB has used a kid to deliver a message to us." Hotch said curtly.

"Let's get back, get this kid's face on the news." Hotch was already leading them towards the gate entrance. "If she isn't under the UNSUB's control, she was paid or coerced to deliver that message, which means we've got a good shot at finding her."

* * *

Reid's heart was racing. He was gagged and handcuffed and sitting in the back of a van. He'd stopped at a water fountain for a drink as Hotch and Morgan and Prentiss had continued on ahead of him and then had felt a sharp, burning pain in his thigh. At first he thought he'd been stung by a wasp, but then the world seemed to tilt sideways. His team members had turned a corner and there had been a man standing over him, helping him to his feet.

"Your friend okay?" A man had asked as the UNSUB steered a _very_ drugged Reid out of the park.

"Yeah, just a bit sick, is all." The UNSUB said. As if on cue, Reid crumpled to the ground and vomited a little onto the pavement. Distantly, Reid heard the UNSUB speaking to the good Samaritan.

"Look, he is diabetic. Need to get him to a hospital..."

"Shouldn't I just call an ambulance?"

Reid couldn't talk. His mouth couldn't form the words.

"Nah, I have his insulin back at the van. You think you could give me a hand with him?"

The man must've nodded because Reid felt himself being pulled to his feet and gently steered out of the amusement park.

Then they'd loaded Reid into the back of the van, and now they were sitting, waiting, the van idling. The UNSUB had apparently injected him with something else- Reid wasn't sure what- but he heard the stranger wish the UNSUB "good luck".

The UNSUB thanked the man for his help, and the door closed. Reid felt like puking again, but he knew he had to stay alert, focus on his environment.

The teenage boy from the flyer was sitting across from Reid, his eyes dark and sunken, hair greasy.

"What if she gets caught?" The boy asked the driver nervously. "She's a little kid, Dad."

"That's why she won't get caught. Nobody suspects a little girl," the man said, and yawned. Reid tried to pay attention to the conversation, knowing that it might be important. All of this might be important. But his mind kept blurring, the need to sleep was so strong.

"They're FBI, right? If they notice he's missing, they..."

"She'll just look like a lost little girl. We went through this, Connor. She gives the black one the envelope, before he can really respond, she bolts."

"And he's what? 35 or something? And in good shape? If he chases her..."

"The park is packed. That's where being little comes in handy. When you need to duck under legs and between hoards of people. She'll be fine. Stop worrying." The UNSUB was chuckling, as if he found the boy's anxiety funny.

"But if she _does_ get caught... she knows too much."

"If she does get caught, which she won't, she won't say a damn thing..."

Reid tilted, then righted himself, registering dimly that he had almost passed out on the stripped van's floor. There was the sudden sound of hands slapping on the side of the tinted van door's window.

"What did I tell you?" the driver said, smiling. The boy, Connor, reached back and unlocked the door. A little girl jumped into the van, breathing hard, cheeks flushed. She glanced over at Reid, then back towards the driver.

"He looks sick," the girl said warily, and touched Reid's shoulder lightly. Reid moaned into his gag.

"He's fine," the driver said brusquely. He pulled the van out into the street.

"His eyes look funny and his face is really white. And he is sweating." The girl settled down beside Reid and stared at him. She felt sorry for him, gagged and scared, his eyes both sleepy-looking and frightened. He looked like all the new kids, when they first came, but she still felt bad.

"Did you give them the envelope?" The driver asked, ignoring her comments. The van had sped up now. Reid tried to gauge where they were but he felt disoriented, as if they were driving in circles. His head was spinning. Indeed, everything was spinning; vertigo.

"Yeah, just like you said. But the black guy chased me."

_Black guy?_ Reid struggled to think. _Black Guy._ Morgan! Morgan had... Reid forced his eyes to open and hazily focused on the small face. The girl was about 6, but small for her age. However, she acted much older.

"But you lost him right? He didn't see the van?"

"No. I darted through a crowd of people waiting for the tilt-a-whirl, underneath that... he didn't see."

"You're _sure_?"

"Yeah," the girl inhaled loudly.

"Well, good... not that it matters anyway."

Reid was floating somewhere where time seemed to being playing tricks on him. He felt high, really high. He'd smoked marijuana once- and only once- in college once when he'd been 13 and had a horrible panic attack, but time had also distorted itself like this.

The van stopped and the door slid open.

Reid squinted against the sudden bright sunlight. He felt two pairs of strong, male arms yank him from the van and escort him to another vehicle. He could hear the little girl following behind, her shoes soft on the rocks. Where were they?

Before Reid could make anything out, they were back in a van again, except this one smelled older- mustier, tinged with old blood, maybe- and Reid blinked and struggled against the cuffs on his wrists. The metal bit into the soft flesh, but the pain woke him some. When he glanced up the little girl was watching him, warily, mouth half open. Reid watched her carefully.

"What's going on back there?" The driver demanded as the "new" van started up. "I hear movement."

Reid stared at the little girl. If only he wasn't gagged, if only he could get her alone, talk to her. "What's he doing, Elle?" The driver snapped louder when the girl failed to respond.

"Not sure. Hold on!" The girl shuffled over to Reid and studied his wrists, studied the bloody lacerations. "The cuffs are too tight. His wrists are bleeding a little."

"I heard movement. Is he struggling?" The driver's voice was stern, angry. From laughing to pissed off in less than ten minutes, Reid registered dimly. Not a good sign. Elle glanced at Reid and sighed. Swallowed.

"I don't... I don't think so. I think it's just they are too tight or something. He's pretty out of it... I think they cut when we went around that bend."

"You watch him," The driver snapped at the child, and Reid could feel the van speed up. "You know what to do if he gets out of line?"

Reid watched the girls' head duck, eyes lowered. She sighed softly. "I know."

"I expect you to do your duty. Teach the younger children."

There was another sigh, and the 6 year old glanced over at Spencer Reid's 27-year-old pale, dazed face.

"I _know_."

"Well?" The UNSUB's voice was challenging, but also coaxing.

"But he didn't do anything wrong yet!" The little girl protested, glancing over at the drugged agent. The UNSUB craned his neck around and glanced at Reid, gagged and bound and lying miserably on the van's stripped floor.

"He's_ awake_. And you said you weren't sure if you heard movement from 'im. I think I_ did_ hear movement. So punish him-"

"Daddy..." The little girl's voice went up an octave.

"Elle, you can punish that boy, or _I_ can punish you_ both_. It's your choice."

The little girl sighed. Looked at Reid sadly. Reid stared at her hazily, watching, barely comprehending. She crawled over towards the back of the van and Reid heard metal clinking as she rummaged around. She came back with a large mag-lite, sighing heavily.

"You don't move until you get Daddy's permission, and you never try to get out of your bonds," the girl said blandly, eyes not meeting Reid's. She raised the flashlight. Reid shut his eyes, but was still stunned by the shockwave of pain that radiated through his head as the flashlight was brought down on his skull. The brilliant shockwave and stars of white, hot pain.

"I didn't hear anything..." the UNSUB cooed delightedly from the driver's seat.

"She hit him, Daddy, I saw it..." the boy, Connor, offered softly.

"I don't believe I was talking to you, boy... _Elle?_ I didn't hear anything!"

"I hit him Daddy. I think I knocked him out." Reid kept his eyes shut. Was the girl trying to give him a way out? He didn't know. But he kept his eyes closed anyway.

She hadn't knocked him out but the child had one hell of an arm. There was laughter from the UNSUB.

"Maybe you did, then," the UNSUB chuckled, and Reid could more sense than see that the man was looking at him again. "Hell, that's going to be one hell of a bruise, Elle. Good for you."

"_Thanks_..."

* * *

"Like this?"

"No!" Morgan snapped, and rubbed at his eyes. "The forehead was higher, and wider. Eyes were bigger, a little more almond-y. You have the nose right. Bigger lower lip."

The sketch artist blinked and nodded. He was using a computer to get the details down... but even this process was taking too long.

"You said her eyes were blue?" The technician clicked on a few buttons and the virtual child's irises flared a bright robin's egg blue.

"Yes, but darker. More gray-blue." Morgan sighed. "Hair was a bit redder. Blond, but redder. And lighter."

A few more clicks. The technician looked at Morgan. "Like _this_?"

"Sort of." Morgan said flatly.

"Did you see her teeth?"

"Yeah, she smiled right before she gave me the damned envelope. Baby teeth. None missing. No adult teeth yet." Morgan admitted. Damn it. A kid who hadn't even lost a single baby tooth had had something to do with Reid's disappearance.

"Then your mystery child is probably no older than 7, probably closer to 5 or 6," the technician informed unnecessarily. Morgan nodded stiffly.

"Red sweater, buttoned up. Bangs, hair in pig tails, pink ribbons, dark blue cords, didn't see the shoes..."

"Clothing, even hair, is easy to alter. What's important are the facial features themselves, eye color, eye shape, things that can't be altered easily." There were a few more clicks. "This look like the kid you saw?"

Morgan stared at the image and nodded once. It was pretty damn close.

* * *

The drug was wearing off, and as it did Reid realized he'd been stripped naked except for his boxers. His hands were tied with rope above his head and he was sitting on hay. Bands of early morning sunlight arced across his body, but he couldn't tell where the light was coming from.

His head was pounding. Throbbing. He moaned and leaned his head to the side and vomited again.

The little girl from the car- _Elle_- was sitting across from him. She had changed clothes, and was now wearing jeans and a jacket and canvas lace-up sneakers. The gag had been removed from Reid's mouth, and the kid was holding a doll, staring at him appraisingly.

Reid woke all the way up then. He wasn't dreaming.

"I was on the TV this morning," the little girl told Reid proudly before he had a chance to say anything. He stared at her, not sure what to say in response to that. Profiling children was sometimes harder than profiling adults, especially for Spencer Reid, who had very rarely spent time with children growing up and didn't have any nieces or nephews to compare "abnormal" children to. Children, as a general rule, also weren't UNSUBS. He decided to wait, and watch.

"Not really me,_ actually_. A drawing of me. Your friend was on the TV too. All three of them. And you, too, of course."

_All three of them_. That meant Hotch, Morgan and Prentiss, as JJ and Rossi had been distributing flyers in another part of the park with some local law enforcement officers and Garcia had been tracking stuff down on computers all day back at the Quantico field office.

Reid tried to get more comfortable, but couldn't. The ropes were tied too tightly, pulling harshly at his chest. His breath was coming out in sharp, short bursts.

"You must be cold," the girl said, scooting closer to Reid. She left her doll in the straw and sat beside him, just close enough that he could sense her body heat. "I was cold at first too, but if you're good you get out faster. 'Cept you're lucky this is summer. I was down here in winter. It was _really_ cold then."

"Where are we?" Reid croaked. Good? Get Out faster? Did that mean they didn't intend to kill him outright?

"The oubliette," The girl said softly, stretching out each syllable, gazing around indifferently as if she were in a WAL-MART. She leaned closer to Reid, small face just a few inches from his. "Wanna know where you go after this?"

Reid wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he nodded anyway.

"Dungeon," the child said simply. "That's where they _test_ you. It's kind of scary, but you either pass or fail. Right now you are just supposed to think about how bad you've been."

"I haven't... I haven't been _bad_." Reid said simply. His voice was quivering. The child crawled back over to her doll and picked it up, brushed the plastic doll face soothingly. Picked bits of straw out of the synthetic hair.

"That's what I thought, too. At_ first_. But you'll learn. And then you'll be grateful..." The girl was cradling the doll now.

Reid nodded slightly, head spinning. He'd never been good at talking to kids, but now... he had to.

"M-My name is Spencer Reid. I work for the FBI. I can _help_ you..."

"I don't need help, silly." The girl laughed, still staring at the doll's face, refusing to meet his desperate eyes. "And I already know who _you_ are."

"The people who took you... they are bad people. If you help me, we can stop them."

The girl's head arched up. Her eyes narrowed. "Bad?"

Reid nodded. "They took you, right? They took you from... your real Mommy and Daddy?"

"My real parents didn't want me anyway. That's why they took me. And that's why they took _you_." The doll that had, just seconds ago, been cradled in the small arms was tossed angrily towards Reid. It hit the wooden wall next to him and lay in the dusty straw, apparently abandoned.

"Can I at least ask you your name?" Reid asked hesitantly. The girl stared at him harder.

"You already know it." The girl snapped, crawling away from him. "You know it because you're smart. A _genius_. And they called me it in the van so I _know_ you know it."

Reid remained silent. He knew the child was a victim, just like him, just like the tortured bodies they'd found in runoff ditches. He knew she was suffering from Stockholm syndrome, at the very least. He ran through the missing kids who were associated with this case. None of them matched this girl's age or physical description. How long had this kid been here?

"A word to the wise," the girl said stonily, sounding much older and sinister than she looked, crawling backwards through the straw. The oubliette was only about four feet tall, but the girl was short enough to walk around without crawling or walking hunched over. So why was she crawling? Reid peered and could see her crabwalk until she reached what looked like a small, wooden staircase he hadn't noticed before.

"You'll never get out of here if you lie. And if you lie to me... I'm supposed to _punish_ you." There was a sing-songy quality to the voice that made Reid flinch. She'd picked that up from the UNSUB, obviously.

"Elle, wait..."

"I have to go, now. You lied. You're a liar. That means no water for_ you_."

Reid suddenly realized that his body was screaming for water. How long had he been here?

"Elle, _wait_!"

"You better start behaving _Spencer_, or you'll never last the dungeon." He heard her shoes on the stairs, and what sounded like a door being slammed. There was the heavy turning of lock tumblers falling into place.

* * *

"Julie, what are doing down here?" It was Elle's voice. Reid didn't have to open his eyes to know that voice. He'd tried wriggling out of the ropes binding his wrists but Elle hadn't tied him apparently, and eventually he'd fallen into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

"The man looks bad." If possible, the new voice was even... younger. Reid forced his eyes open. Since his transport in the van, he hadn't seen an adult, not even an adolescent. The corpses they'd found had all shown signs of extensive torture, and the knife wounds had been delivered by an adult, the coroner had been certain of that, from the angle and the strength required. The smaller, more delicate "cuts" had been performed with a scalpel and been too neat and meticulous to have been the work of anybody but a professional. A doctor or surgeon had delivered the incisions, the coroner had said.

God, what if the man had been wrong?

Elle was standing near the stairs with a flashlight, but a tiny little girl was sitting cross-legged near Reid. The smaller girl looked about four. Reid shut his eyes wearily.

"If he catches you down here, Julie, you know what'll happen."

"The man looks really bad," came the tiny voice again, high and chirpy, like a chipmunk's.

"He looks bad because he_ is_ bad. And he isn't a man; he's a boy, our new big brother."

Reid felt small hands on his feet, surprisingly warm hands. "He feels cold. He feels_ dead_."

"He's _not_ dead," Elle said sharply, and walked forward. Reid kept his eyes closed. Felt the older child prod him lightly in the ribs with the flashlight. When he failed to respond there was a sharper prod to his ribs. Reid slit his eyes open.

"See? I told you. Not dead. Now get out of here."

"He needs water," the smaller girl persisted.

"Get out of here!" Elle grabbed the smaller girl by the shoulders and wrenched her back towards the staircase. Reid heard the younger child burst into tears.

"He's gonna die," the younger voice howled.

"Shut up, he won't die."

Reid tried to force spit into his mouth. "I _need _water, Elle. Julie is right. Do you know what happens to a human if they go for more than 3 days without water?" Just the sentence had him panting, like he had run a marathon, and he could no longer feel his feet, much less his arms.

Elle momentarily let Julie go, who flinched away, crying less pronounced.

"Yeah, but you've only gone 2 and a half days." Elle said flatly.

"But do you know what _happens_?" Reid begged. If this little kid was in charge of his life, he had to get through to her. The girl sighed heavily, as if bored, and redirected the beam from the flashlight. Reid arched his neck and followed the beam.

A small skeleton dressed in overalls and a striped t-shirt was tied with rope to bolts in the wall in the corner of the room, about 20 feet from him. It had been so dark, he hadn't seen it before. Reid gulped and shut his eyes.

"You _die_," Elle said simply and swung the flashlight beam away from the skeleton. Towards the little girl Reid had only gotten a dim look at previously.

"But I get you water after you've been bad and maybe_ she_ dies," The little girl, the one who had cried for him, was covered head to foot in dark bruises, the most prominent of which were a set of finger print bruises around the tiny neck.

"She's closer to dying than you, and I have had her as a sister longer than I have had you as a brother," Elle said simply, as if discussing a math equation, algebra.

"Elle, if you untie me, I can help you... and your sister. Julie."

"If you keep saying bad things, I _really_ can't get you water."

Reid shut his eyes. Be good. _Act_ good. But what _was_ good to this child? He had no idea.

"You're right," Reid croaked, pulling on the ropes weakly, hoping he was saying the right words. "It was bad of me to call your new Mommy and Daddy bad. And to lie. And to pretend not to know your name."

Elle looked at him warily.

"I guess I was bad. I guess... I need to be taught."

"Your parents never taught you to be good," Elle said simply, almost sadly, as if she felt sorry for Reid. Reid tried to school his features to look as innocent and vulnerable as possible.

"No, you're right. They didn't. But I _want_ to be good."

"Julie, go back upstairs," Elle said, shoving the younger child towards the stair case. The little girl was still sniffling but finally nodded and disappeared into the dark.

"If you want to be good, that means you can't die," Elle said simply, studying Reid, the flashlight beam on his face. Reid nodded. His hair was limp, sweaty. It was hot down here, and his cells were screaming for water.

"That means I am going to need water, right?" Reid said weakly, not bothering to act weaker than he actually felt.

"_Yeah_," the girl aimed the flashlight towards the corner again, where Reid knew the child skeleton was tied to the wall.

* * *

"What do you have Garcia?" Hotch barked into the computer. "You're on speaker."

JJ, Prentiss, Rossi, Hotch and Morgan were seated around a conference table. It had been 3 and a half days since Reid had vanished, but no children had been taken on that day.

Because Reid had been the target.

"Well, like you guys guessed, no adult fingerprints on the envelope or the letter inside, nada. But there were the child's fingerprints... Here's where it gets interesting."

"What've you got baby-girl?" Morgan asked anxiously.

"Those finger-prints belong to a ghost. Well, not really-"

"_Garcia_," Hotch said sternly, his tone conveying his message: _get to the point._

"Yes sir. Three years ago Boston PD found an abandoned car, parents dead inside. Murdered. The police ran the plates of course, discovered the identity of our murdered couple. Also found the baby seat in the back, minus the baby. Their three year and a half year old daughter, Lise was missing, but her finger prints covered the inside of the car. However, a third blood type was found within the car, believed to belong to the child, and the police decided that due to the quantity of blood the child was dead... she was officially declared dead over 2 and a half years ago."

"Was the blood tested to see if it was a match to the parents?" Hotch snapped.

"Yes. DNA testing revealed that the third blood type found in that car belonged to our murdered couple's child, and the CSI techies found over 2 litres of it, so considering the age and size of the child-"

"Thanks Garcia. Do you have a photograph of Lise...?"

"Lise _Miller_. Faxing it to you now. Also a police age-enhanced image. Along with the fingerprints...it's the same kid, sir. I'll let you know if I find out anymore."

Hotch nodded and the computer screen when blank.

"Well, at least we know they don't _have_ to kill," Prentiss sighed. "They've had this little girl for over three years."

"This changes everything...we've been going on the assumption that we simply haven't found the bodies of the other victims. But if they are keeping some of these kids around for extended periods, they are going to need more space, more room..." Hotch was up, pacing, looking at maps.

"Last 3 kids were taken right here in Virginia, Lise Miller in Boston, Connor Stephens from Queens, New York." Hotch was pulling out push pins, inserting green push pins into places on the map where missing children who hadn't been found yet had been abducted.

"Reid was taken here." Hotch pushed a green pin into a suburb of Virginia. Next came the red push pins. Hotch quickly pushed 8 pins into the map, all eight scattered over the north-eastern seaboard.

"Those are where 8 of our known murdered victims were abducted _from_," Hotch said sternly, eyes glued to the map. Very carefully he removed 8 black pushpins and held them cupped in his left hand.

"Someone read out to me where the 8 murder victims were found."

Morgan quickly read out a list of locations. All in New York.

"New York is the safety area for these UNSUBS," Hotch muttered. "They feel hidden there, protected there. Invisible."

"Which probably means their actual residence isn't anywhere near the dump site," Morgan added, getting up. Hotch gently removed one white pin from the small plastic case of push pins and inserted it into the map, right next to Reid's green pin.

"And the white one means...?" Morgan trailed tiredly. He had barely gotten any sleep since Reid had been taken.

"It's where we saw Lise Miller. She was abducted here, and spotted here." Hotch's finger's trailed over the map.

"Anybody thinking what I'm thinking?" J.J. asked tiredly, draining the last of her coffee and approaching the map. Morgan nodded and turned to her.

"Yeah- that the best person to figure this out is Reid."

"Well, yeah," J.J. said pensively, before turning to face Morgan head on, "but what I was really thinking that never before in my life have I hoped so much that the next pin we're going to push into a map is white instead of black."

Morgan nodded stiffly.

* * *

"Elle?" Reid croaked hoarsely. His head felt like it was being crushed- not only from the blow the little girl had delivered in the van, but dehydration, no doubt. "Elle?"

He could hear soft feet on the stair case. A flashlight clicked on and more shuffling. What sounded like crying. A very small child.

Reid squinted in the darkness.

"Julie?"

"Daddy found Elle trying to sneak water down," the smaller child said mournfully. "He got really mad, and now Elle won't move!" The child coughed and hiccupped.

"Julie, do you think... do you think you could untie me? I could help. I could help Elle."

"She won't get up," the little girl lamented and continued to walk towards Reid. "But... but Daddy didn't notice. I got this..." Reid squinted even harder. The girl was holding something rectangular.

"What is that, Julie? A juice box?"

The child nodded fervently. "Is it okay? It's _my_ juice box so he won't know it's missing."

Reid nodded back. The child sniffled and clumsily pulled the straw off the side of the box, then stabbed the straw into the box and carefully approached Reid. She stuck the straw in Reid's mouth, watching carefully as he quickly drained the tiny box of fluid.

"Thank...you," Reid gasped, licking his lips. It definitely wasn't enough fluid, but it was something. And the sugar would help. He hadn't eaten in days, either. He tried to focus on the situation. _C'mon Reid, focus. _

"Julie... you said Elle won't get up. What happened?"

"Daddy... he got really mad. Said she was disobeying him by trying to get water for you."

"What happened then?" Reid coaxed, pulling again on his ties. He wanted to scream in frustration.

"Julie, do you think you could untie these?" The girl looked hesitantly at Reid, sucked in her lower lip and stumbled over to one of his wrists. He could feel her tiny fingers picking at the thick rope, to no avail. Finally Reid sighed.

"It's okay. That's okay."

"What about Joey's knife?"

Joey's Knife? Reid's mind swirled with a million questions.

"What do you mean, Julie? Who is Joey?"

The child shot the flashlight beam over to the corner of the room, where the skeleton was. "He has a knife?"

"He does? The _skeleton_?"

"Yeah. It's in his ribs. But I could maybe get it?"

Reid nodded quickly, excitedly. "Yes, yes, you go get it, okay? Go Julie!"

The child stared at the skeleton for a moment, looking uncertain. Finally she shuffled over to the corner. Reid heard her breathing hard, probably out of fear, and then the shuffling of her shoes as she returned.

The knife was rusted to hell but...

"Julie, how did Joey die?" Reid asked carefully.

"He wouldn't admit to being bad, so Daddy stabbed him." Julie said simply, and held the knife towards Reid like a present. "How do I do _this_?" the child was staring him in the face, her own face pale with fear. Based on her behaviour Reid guessed she'd only recently "arrived". She was rightly terrified, but didn't seem brainwashed like Elle.

"Julie, how old are you?"

"Um... what month is it?" She scratched her head, deep in thought as she counted the months mentally.

"July."

"I'm five now, then." The girl said proudly. Reid smiled back encouragingly.

"Julie, have you ever cut anything before... like, say, bread or..."

"I can cut bread... and a long time ago, with my old Mommy and Daddy, play-doh, but that was only with a plastic knife..."

"Okay," Reid exhaled tiredly. "Think of these ropes like Play-Doh, okay? You're going to have to cut fast, though, and harder than with play-doh..."

The girl nodded and began to saw, tongue sticking out as she worked. Reid smiled, eyes darting through the darkness to the stairs. If the UNSUB came downstairs _now_...

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Reid' right hand was free. Julie tried to start on the left bind, but Reid shook his head. "No, it's okay, I can cut the other one now, okay? Good job." His heart was hammering. "Thank you."

He sawed at the rope crazily, adrenaline flooding him.

"You're good at cutting stuff," Julie said, staring up at him. Reid tried to smile back, but it felt forced.

"Julie, tell me, how many kids live here?"

"Besides you and me and Elle?" Julie asked softly. Finally Reid had the other wrist free. He flexed his wrist softly, testing his strength. Finally turned back to the little girl and nodded. "Yeah, besides you and Elle... and me."

"There's Connoooor. He's 15, I think."

Reid scuttled forward and gently pried the flashlight loose from the girl's hand. He smiled and nodded, encouraging her to go on. "There's Bradley, he's 9. There's Ruthy... I don't know how old she is. She's new here. There's Mark, too. I think he's 12."

Reid ran the names and ages through his head; Connor and the last three kids she'd listed had all been reported missing and fit the UNSUBs' M.O., but Elle and Julie... their disappearances hadn't been linked to this case. At least not that Reid knew of.

"How about your parents... how many parents?" Reid questioned, trying his best to sound calm.

"There's Daddy. And Mommy." The girl said the words simply, as if Reid were daft for asking.

"Okay, thank you. You sure there's nobody else?"

Julie shook her head no.

"No grandparents? No aunts or uncles or grown-up friends?"

"Of my new Mommy and Daddy?"

Reid nodded.

"No. Just them. And the kids like us."

Reid nodded again. _Kids like us_. Made no sense. All the other kidnap victims had, indeed, been minors. He was 27 though...

"Okay." He held out his hand for the small child, and she took it. Groaning slightly Reid crawled through the small space Elle had referred to as an "oubliette". Reid kept the flashlight beam focused on the stairs and gently eased onto the first one.

Nothing. No traps. He eased onto the next step, and the next, and finally was at the top of the stair case. Julie reached out and grabbed the door handle and yanked the door open.

They were swallowed by darkness. Reid felt his stomach tighten. Darkness. He could remember his colleagues- his _family_- asking him about his fear of the dark once. _Yeah, Reid, why are you afraid of the dark?_ Reid angled the flashlight beam into the black, cavernous room and swung it around. Shivered. The walls were cinderblock with an ungodly assortment of tools hanging from them.

If Reid hadn't known better, he would've thought he was in a high school shop class after hours. The room contained, from what he could tell, many large, wooden tables with vices, clamps, cupboards, tools (both electric and hand-held). Reid felt Julie's hand tighten in his a bit.

"Elle's over _here_..." the girl said solemnly, leading him by memory through the dark.

"Julie, where are we?" Reid asked hesitantly.

"This? This is the dungeon."

"Can... can we get out of the dungeon?" Reid glanced down at the young face, trying to see the expression in the relative gloom. Julie shrugged.

"Sometimes. But I tried after Daddy put Elle down here and the special door is locked again."

"Special door?" Reid inquired, feeling his heart begin to beat faster again.

"Metal door." Julie clarified and pointed. Reid turned and aimed the flashlight. There was another staircase, and at the top of it, like the child had said, a thick, steel door. The type of door commonly associated with panic rooms.

The irony of that door keeping them locked in a state of panic wasn't lost on Spencer Reid.

* * *

Chapter two coming (relatively) soon, guys. Want to see how this fares, if it's even worth continuing, and also want to work on some other stuff and let this one percolate a bit. Haven't really seen CM in a long time, been staying away from TV in general, and it's hard to keep the characters' voices and personalities in mind if you go too long without watching them on the idiot box.

-Lexikal


	2. Chapter 2: Ring around the rosie

**This is my Last Resort (chapter two)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None, really, but there is a brief mention of Tobias Hankel but no spoilers for that episode.

**Warnings:** Chapter two, we're getting a bit darker now, people.

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish, is taken hostage and abused along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please read the first chapter for the full summary and author's notes...

* * *

_**I never realized I was spread too thin/ Till it was too late and I was empty within/ Hungry/ Feeding on Chaos/ And Living in Sin...-**__ "This is my Last Resort" by Papa Roach_

"Yeah, that's definitely the guy I saw... I...oh my _god_," the man, Richard Barker, shut his eyes closed. "The guy with me told me he was just _diabetic_. I never thought..."

"Of course you didn't, sir," Hotch interjected smoothly. One piece of the puzzle solved; how one of the UNSUB's had managed to get Reid out of the park without being noticed. Make Reid look sick and ask a passer-by for help.

"He's not diabetic then?" the man asked anxiously, looking back up at Hotch, then over at Rossi. Rossi shook his head. "Oh my god, what did I do..."

"You didn't do anything wrong, sir," Hotch tried again, but the man was clearly distressed. "You hear about little kids going missing, being taken, but this wasn't a kid, you know? It never occurred to me... you just don't _think_..."

Hotch nodded and thanked the man for his time. The door clicked open and Hotch heard JJ talking to Barker, offering him water, coffee. The door closed again and they were alone.

"What do you think?" Rossi asked, sighing heavily.

"He's smarter than we originally gave him credit for. Or they. Although Barker didn't remember a woman."

"Someone has to stay at home to take care of the _kids_..." Rossi said darkly.

"Reid's been gone..." Hotch checked his watch, "What, 58 hours now?"

Rossi nodded again.

"That's nearing three days."

"They kept Lise Miller for three years. And Barker said he saw a teenage boy that looked like Connor in the passenger seat, which means that... if that boy _was_ Connor, they've kept him alive over six months..."

"Yeah, but Reid isn't a minor... Connor would be fifteen now, the oldest. Reid's 27. What's the connection?"

"They're all Caucasian, all come from dysfunctional or broken homes- past histories of abuse, divorce, neglect, domestic violence, parental mental illness, removal from the family..."

"That's still too huge an angle," Hotch said, grinding the words out. "I'm going to get some coffee. You want some?"

Rossi shook his head no. His heart was already racing too fast.

* * *

"_Elle_?" Reid croaked, letting Julie pull him deeper into what she'd called the "dungeon".

"She's over here, Spencer," Julie mumbled, pronouncing his name SPEN-serrrr. Reid followed her. Elle was lying in a claw-footed tub, floating in water, pale face bobbing right at the surface.

Reid didn't stop to think. He let go of Julie and immediately grabbed at the child, lifting her out of the water. The water was freezing. Elle's face was stark white, her lips tinged purple. It was a wonder she hadn't drowned.

"Elle?" Reid squeaked, removing her soaking jacket, wringing it out. The 6 year old lay still on the floor. Reid felt for a pulse on the neck, found one, shallow and fast.

"Why isn't she moving?" Julie asked worriedly, voice beginning to shake.

"She... She's just unconscious. Just... that's like sleeping."

"She alive?"

Reid glanced over at the little girl and smiled, nodded. "Yeah, she's still alive."

He stared back at the bathtub, full of icy water. Approached it and cupped some in his hands.

"I _wouldn't_ do that if I were you," the voice was male, young, wary. Reid flipped the flashlight beam in the direction of the voice. A young boy was sitting on one of the wooden tables, one of his wrists held awkwardly in a vice clamp. Aside from the vice, which he could apparently remove, he wasn't tied down. In fact, he was kicking his legs back and forth over the edge of the table.

"Who... who are you?" Reid stammered.

"They call me Mark, here, but..."

"You're 12, right?" Reid asked softly. If he knew the kid's age, he knew the kid. There were only so many possibilities. The boy nodded. _Duncan Marshall._ He'd been missing for a little over 2 months.

"Why... why shouldn't I drink the water?" Reid breathed heavily.

"That's _punishment_ water. That's why Elle was put in it... for trying to get_ you_ water. You think it's just _ordinary_ water?"

Reid aimed the flashlight beam at the bathtub again, at the water. It looked clear. He sniffed it. It smelled okay.

"I don't know," Reid said uncertainly. "He...he doesn't even know I am untied. Why would he do anything to the water?"

"I don't _know_," the boy said flatly, almost sullenly. "I don't even know why I don't take this vice off my wrist. Or why I am here to begin with. But I just don't think it's a very good idea..."

Reid shook his head in amazement. He had been here less than 3 days by his estimate, and already he was scared of drinking water without permission from an UNSUB. He returned to the bathtub, scooped some water back into his hands and took a careful sip. Waited. Nothing. No burning.

"If it's poisoned, you might not know until it's too late," the boy sitting on the table informed bleakly. Reid knew that. He nodded.

"Happened to this other kid who was here. This boy. He wasn't supposed to eat until he was told. He did anyway, ate food that was left out for some _other_ kid. Small bites, like you're taking small sips right now. Thought it was safe because it was for some other kid... didn't think it would be poisoned or have razors or something inside..."

"What happened?" Reid asked, still pouring water into his mouth, drinking as fast as he could. He was pretty sure, statistically, that the water was safe. The game, for him, hadn't begun yet. He was fairly sure of that. After all, he hadn't been told, directly,_ not_ to drink the water. There was no power-play in this act; he wasn't disobeying because he hadn't been given any instructions yet, any rules to obey or disobey.

"He ate the food. I don't know what happened, exactly. He was fine, and then all of a sudden, it was like he started _screaming_. Started spitting up blood, and then he went white and clawed at his throat. Then he was dead." The boy now-called-Mark stopped swinging his legs and stared down at his wrist in the vice. Reid approached the boy slowly, cautiously, so as not to spook him.

The kid's wrist was purple and swollen, the circulation almost entirely cut off.

"How long has that vice been on your wrist?" Reid asked, trying to keep the concern out of his voice. The kid was already spooked, he didn't need Reid's worry adding to his torture.

"I dunno. A few days maybe." Mark's voice sounded bland. "It doesn't hurt anymore, and so far I haven't gotten in trouble. When I get tired I can lie back on the table and sleep, and he brings me water to drink. No food yet, but this is a punishment..."

"Punishment for what?" Reid ventured. He put his hand on the vice, and without asking, began to unscrew it.

"What are you doing?" Mark pulled away as if he'd been physically shocked, expression terrified. "He'll _know_!"

"You can't leave that on like that, _Duncan_," Reid said, trying to meet the boy's eyes. "You'll lose your hand. Do you understand me?"

"Better than my _life_. You better put it back on right now! And call me _Mark_, got it? If he finds out..." the boy reached out and shoved at Reid, and then scrambled off the table and into the darkness.

"_Mark_, come back. Come _here_."

He could hear the panting in the ink black cavern, but it seemed to be coming from all directions. He swung the flashlight beam around, playing the beam over the walls, the multitude of tools. Saw a few small heads. Julie. Duncan. Another small head scurried away from the beam of light too fast for Reid to really make out any detail. Elle was still lying on the cement ground, but her color was coming back to normal. Reid bent down next to her again. Shook her.

She felt warmer now.

"Elle, wake _up_," Reid implored, chewing worriedly on his lower lips. She'd been here the longest. Besides Julie, she seemed to be the youngest, but also the most aware of how the UNSUBs operated. It was Elle he needed to really talk to if any of them had a chance of escaping on their own.

"Elle!"

A pair of small, blue eyes slit open. The little girl let out a long exhale, stared at Reid dazedly, and then something in her mind seemed to connect, some horrible piece of the puzzle. She sat up, alarmed, pushing Reid away from her as if he was a rabid animal.

"What are you doing up here? Why aren't you in the oubliette?" Her voice was a shrill shriek, edging on hysteria.

Reid shook his head. Put his hands out in front of him, a universal, non-threatening gesture.

"It's okay. I wriggled free. It's okay,"

"_Liar_! My dad tied you up, and _nobody_ can get out of his knots. Nobody..." the small blonde head whipped around furiously. "Where's Julie? You made her cut you out of your binds, right?"

"Elle, calm down. I can protect you now..." Reid's voice cut off sharply when he saw the tears in the little girl's eyes. Desperate tears.

"No, you _can't_... you can't! Nobody can! The other police man couldn't, and he had a gun... you don't even have a..."She was sobbing now, face hidden in her hands.

Reid recoiled at the disclosure. Other police man? What?

"Elle, this is _important_. You have to talk to me, okay. What other police man? What are you talking about?"

"Young police man. Like you," for the first time since Spencer Reid had met the child, she seemed smaller than her age, younger. "Young. He tried to make us safe, didn't listen and didn't want to be our big brother. He managed to pretend for a while though, then one day he got one of Daddy's guns, but Daddy knew somehow... and then Daddy came down and killed Edgar and Paula. Killed him too. _Just as a warning_."

Reid exhaled loudly. Tried to think. Was this even true? Had Elle been told, coached, to tell this story? Was this part of the game... had he been wrong? Had the game, for him, already started or...?

Only, the child had been unconscious and floating in ice water. That suggested that she wasn't toying with him, was as confused as he was.

But before Reid could try and figure out anything else, there was the sound of a buzz. The metal door above them was opening. Reid clicked his flashlight off and ducked under the work tables, heart hammering.

* * *

"Oh, _Children_..." The voice was playful, disturbingly melodic. Reid heard a switch being flipped and then a buzzing noise. The room was awash in buzzing, fluorescent lights. A set of heavy footsteps began to pound down the stairs. Reid stayed still, barely daring to move. Elle had crawled under the table directly across from him and was staring at Reid with terror-stricken eyes.

"Ohhhh, Ellllllle...somebody's not in their bath like a good litttttle _girl_..."

Elle choked out a sob and scrambled out from under the table. She was still wet, but no longer dripping. She approached the UnSub, head bowed. Reid tried to see, but he couldn't and still stay hidden from view. And if the UnSub decided to explore the room she would clearly find Reid cowering under the table, free. _She_.

It was the first time Reid had thought of it. The UnSub in the car had been a male, a grown man. _Daddy_. This was an adult woman's voice, middle-aged or older. Treacly on the surface, sinister underneath. _Mommy_.

The sound of Mommy's voice made Reid's blood feel like it was curdling. He bit his lip harder, till he tasted blood. He could hear Elle's breathing starting to hitch with fear.

"I fell asleep and then woke up coughing, and then passed out. I thought if I passed out..."

"You know we expect you to obey our orders... we expect you to be a good child."

"Yes, Mommy," Elle said softly, dumbly, without expression. Reid ground his teeth together. If they managed to escape, if any of them managed to live through this, this kid in particular was going to need a life-time of therapy... and even _then_...

"How's Spencer? Did he admit to being a dirty little liar?"

The room was quiet.

"He...he won't wake_ up_..." Elle said timidly, and Reid could almost hear the terror in her voice. She was lying. Reid instantly put the pieces together. Elle lying about him could only mean she was lying _for_ him. For them all.

"He won't wake up, huh? Well, I guess we'll just have to go wake him up then..." Reid scuttled backward as he heard the pair approach his part of the "dungeon". He saw Elle's shoes and small legs pass by his table, saw stockier, older legs with white nurse's shoes follow shortly behind.

Heard the door to the oubliette being opened.

"Here, take _this_..." Mark had scuttled under the tables towards Reid and was holding what looked like a meat cleaver out to the young agent, a demented little smile on his face. His voice was a low susurrus "_Blitz attack_!" the boy whispered, nodding at the meat cleaver with shining eyes. Reid nodded blankly, trying to imagine how long it had taken the boy before him to transform from terrified kidnap victim to desensitized killer.

"Make sure you smash her really hard in the head. So her brains come out. No chances..." Mark trailed.

There was a howl from the oubliette, and Reid scuttled out from under the table, meat cleaver swinging in his right hand. He could hear Elle being beaten, begging. What sounded like choking.

"Where is _he_? You were in charge of_ him_!"

"I don't_ know_!"

"Where is _he_?"

"_Stop it_!" Reid's voice sounded more confident than he felt, almost as if someone else was speaking through him. The woman- "Mommy"- gazed over at him. He walked over to her, weapon behind his back, footing steady.

"What's behind your back, son?" Mommy inquired in a low drawl as Reid approached. Reid shook his head. Nothing. There was nothing behind his back.

"I know there is something," and before Reid could react, the UnSub had a revolver aimed at Elle's head. Elle flinched, and stared up at Spencer Reid.

"Now, you show Mommy what you have for her, and you tell Mommy how you got out of your bonds, and maybe your little sister here won't...well...you know... a big strong boy like you that's worked for the Eff...beee...eyyyyeee...you know what can happen..."

Reid nodded dully. Slowly, carefully, he pulled the meat cleaver from behind his back and tilted it back and forth.

"Oh, how _nice_. A present for Mommy." The UnSub cooed, eyes sparkling with tears. Reid gulped. His team had long since suspected that the subservient partner was psychotic. Mommy, apparently.

"Why don't you put Mommy's gift down in the hay, there, sonny. And kick it over here. Hmmm?"

The revolver was still flush with Elle's temple. Elle had her eyes closed, but her mouth was opening and closing, sounding out silent words. It took Reid a few startled seconds to realize the little girl was saying "hail mary's". Reid nodded and slowly let the cleaver drop to the ground. He kicked it in the general direction of the pair,, watching intently as "Mommy" stopped to reach down and retrieve the cleaver. She picked it up, inspected it, and smiled again.

"That was very thoughtful, Spencer. Mommy has a gift for you too," Reid nodded slowly, eyes wide. Just as long as Elle didn't pay for his stupid mistake... There was a sudden loud burst, and then a bolt of radiating pain in his chest. His vision began to gray, but he was dimly aware of sinking to his knees, and falling into the hay. There was another shot, then, and what sounded distantly like a smaller, lighter body crumpling to the floor.

And then Spencer Reid lost consciousness entirely.

* * *

I wanted to make this chapter about 10 kb longer, but I am not sure when I will upload next, so for those eager to read the next instalment, I thought I would just upload this. Take care. Chapter 3 WILL come.

-Lexikal


	3. Chapter 3: The Dark

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Three)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None, really, but there is a brief mention of Tobias Hankel but no spoilers for that episode (somewhere in this story...I know I plan to include a Tobias Hankel comment in here sooner or later...).

**Warnings:** Chapter Three, we're getting even darker now... your eyes are getting _heavy_...

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish, is taken hostage and abused along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please read the first chapter for the full summary and author's notes...

* * *

_**If I took my life tonight/ Chances are that I might/ Mutilation outta Sight/ And I'm contemplating Suicide...-**_ _"This is my Last Resort" by Papa Roach_

Reid woke up and groaned. His entire chest hurt. He tried to lift himself up. Couldn't. He had to bite down on a short shriek of pain when he tried to move his shoulder. He had to breathe in short, tiny gasps. But at least he _could_ breathe. That was good.

He knew he'd been shot. Probably a through-and-through, it felt clean. "Mommy" had been aiming for his chest, not his heart specifically, obviously, or he wouldn't be here, now. Or maybe she was just a lousy shot. She'd just wanted to shoot him. And she had.

It was pitch black in the oubliette. "_Elle_?" Reid rasped into the darkness. He could remember Elle down here too, remembered the sound of another gunshot shortly before he lost consciousness. "Elle?" He crawled through the straw, blindly feeling in the dark. Finally felt a small body. "ELLE!" There was no movement. Spencer Reid squinted in the darkness, and could dimly make out her shape, the curve of her forehead. Not much else. He fumbled and found the side of the child's neck, pressed two fingers strongly to it. Prayed.

Elle's heart was still beating.

"Elle, come on, wake up?" His voice was a low plead.

Time seemed to stretch forever. He shook her a bit harder.

"ELLE!"

"Spencer?" Her voice was tiny, weak. He nodded, then remembered that she couldn't see him.

"I'm here," Reid soothed, and scooped up the child.

"I feel cold," Elle admitted weakly, and Reid patted her down. Her t-shirt was covered in cold, sticky blood. As was the area on the ground around her. How much blood had she lost?

"Where...where do you hurt?" Reid asked nervously, afraid of the answer. There'd still been light down here earlier, though, and now it was pitch black. But Reid had no sense of time. Maybe this was a trick. Maybe...

"Stomach," the girl gasped. "Why did you come down here? You were supposed to_ lock_ us down here. Then you would only have had to deal with..._Daddy_..."

Reid's mind was swirling. Elle had gone down into the oubliette as a sacrifice, to give Reid- and the rest of them- a better chance at escaping. She'd known, or at least suspected, that she wasn't going to be coming out of this hole.

"I- I couldn't leave you down here with her alone. She would've _killed_ you..." Reid trailed, gently rocking the small, cold body.

"Probably going to die now, anyway. You got shot, too." It wasn't a question.

"Yes," Reid admitted.

"Does yours hurt?" Elle asked, voice clogged with fatigue.

"Well... maybe a _little_ bit," Reid lied. In reality, it felt like somebody was stabbing a white hot fire poker through his shoulder.

"I don't _hurt_," Elle informed the young agent quietly as he continued to rock her. "Am just cold. And tired."

"Elle, you've lost a_ lot _of blood," Reid had found the child's gunshot wound, a small pocket in her stomach, still wet and bleeding. He wriggled out of his shirt, hissing in pain when his shoulder throbbed. He pressed the shirt hard against the gaping bullet wound, ignoring the weak, pained cries.

"It _does_ hurt when you push on it like that," Elle informed Reid groggily, almost sarcastically, trying to pull away.

"I know...I'm sorry." Reid soothed. "But I need you to stay awake, okay? Keep talking to me?"

"I'm thirsty. And I want to sleep."

Reid knew the signs and symptoms of hypovolemic shock. _C'mon guys... find us._

"I know, but you _can't_ sleep. I'm not going to _let_ you sleep..." Reid shifted the child, fully aware that his own shoulder would scream at him, but he welcomed the pain. He felt a little like drifting off, too. And if he did... Elle probably wouldn't wake up.

"Spencer..." Elle whined, and he cuddled her tighter to him, trying to transfer some of his own body heat. He'd been shot in the shoulder, but it was a clean shot, and he was an adult. More blood to lose before the situation became critical. Elle had been shot in the stomach. And Elle was six. He couldn't get her to a hospital, or even get her water to drink to restore fluid loss, but he could try to keep her warm, awake... talking. That would have to do, for now.

"Elle, you said you wanted me to lock you down here... with..." the word was hard to say, "_Mommy_. So I only had to deal with..."

"Yeah. One of them would be easier."

"So you deliberately planned on coming down here?" Reid asked, although he knew better. Elle had been caught off guard, just like him, and hadn't had a choice.

"No. But _still_. You should have locked us in. Then you could've gotten up and out of the dungeon. And out... and _away_." She sighed tiredly and wriggled in his arms. "I thought you were supposed to be _smart_. That's what Daddy said before we took you..."

"But I thought... I thought trying to get away was _bad_?" Reid asked gently, shifting the girl. He knew he was putting her in pain by moving her, but she needed to be more alert. He couldn't have her drifting off.

"It's bad if you get _caught_," Elle said simply. Reid exhaled. Had he misjudged the little girl this entire time?

"Have you ever tried to get away?"

"No. But I am not a grown-up."

Reid nodded in the darkness. "No. No, you're not, are you?"

* * *

Based on the description Barker had given the team, they'd worked up a profile, and J.J. had put the face of "Daddy" on the local and national news stations almost 4 days to the hour after Reid's disappearance. The media circus was having a field day with it. Not only did serial killers who targeted children guarantee more viewers, but the kidnapping of a baby-faced, genius FBI agent was just too much.

The calls began to pour into the Quantico field office within ten minutes of the first news segment airing.

Along with "Daddy's" police sketch was a brief run-down of his general appearance and behaviour.

"Sir?" J.J. asked nervously, poking her head into Hotch's office. "Got one that doesn't sound like a total psycho. Garcia is tracing the call but..."

"What, J.J.?" Hotch asked tiredly. He hadn't slept more than a handful of hours since Reid had been taken. None of them had.

"But I think you might want to talk to him... claims _Daddy_ is his neighbour."

"We have a name for Daddy, yet?" Hotch asked morosely, following J.J. towards the tech room where Garcia was working her magic. "The call's been routed in here?" Hotch asked Garcia, and she nodded, and pressed a button.

"Go ahead, Sir," Garcia said to the computer. Hotch waited a beat. A man's voice filled the air.

"I'm telling you that's my _neighbour_. I've seen him with that boy that was on the news. Little girl too. I'd know that face anywhere."

"Sir," Hotch interrupted, directing his voice towards the computer as Garcia had. "What makes you think your neighbour is the man we're looking for?"

"Besides it _being_ him?" the man on the other end blurted, obviously annoyed. "I'm out watering my roses about three years ago, kinda' late for me, I admit it. Night time, maybe midnight, maybe a bit later. Didn't want the water to burn the leaves. _Anyway_. Ed pulls up in his van and takes out this little girl. I dunno. Couldn't have been more than 3 or so. Kid was crying something fierce. I know for a fact he can't have kids, cause his wife can't... Dolores, you know? She's barren? I ask Ed what he's doing with this little girl, and he tells me it's his granddaughter, and from time to time I see her. Not often, just every so often. 'Cept I've known them both over 15 years, and far as I know Ed was never married to anyone but Dolores, so how does he get a grandbaby suddenly? Never thought much about it, though, I mean... guy was always pretty decent to me. Dolores, too, actually. Then about seven months ago or so, some other kid. A boy. The teenage one. I'm sure of it."

Hotch stared stone-faced at Garcia and nodded.

"Sir, can I have your address, please?"

"Sure but...you should know, I saw their van pull out early this morning..."

"The address, please..." Hotch snapped tiredly, but Garcia's fingers were already tapping crazily on the keyboard.

"Just a second, please, _sir_," Garcia told the caller, and pressed a button, effectively putting him on hold.

"_Sir_," she whispered to Hotch, frowning. "Our caller is phoning from 1238 Phoenix street; that's about 40 minutes from here..."

"Okay, we need to find neighbours with the names Ed or Dolores, or some combination of..."

"_Sir_!" Garcia snapped, and tapped the computer screen. Hotch leaned forward and studied the screen, eyes narrowing. Hotch wanted to swear. Above the address 1238 Phoenix Street were the names: Edward and Dolores White.

Their caller _was_ the UnSub.

"Keep him on the line, Garcia," Hotch half-hissed, half-whispered. Garcia nodded, and pressed a button and the sound of Daddy's voice once again filled the room.

The last thing Hotch heard as he left the tech office was the UnSub telling Garcia that he thought Dolores and Ed had taken the boy and the little girl to their lake house. No, he didn't know where that was. No, he had_ never_ seen the missing FBI agent...

* * *

That's it for chapter 3- I _wanted_ to make it longer but I am going to be away from the net for a few days and I wanted to post this. So, no, Elle doesn't die (yes, she _was _shot in the stomach, and yes, I _do_ realize how serious a wound that is- usually fatal very quickly, but not _always_). One reader commented that there should be a spoiler or warning for the death of a child, but Elle wasn't killed (even though, prior to Reid being shot, the gun was flush with her temple, when Mommy shot Reid, Elle managed to pull away and try to run... and Mommy is obviously pretty out of it (to say the least), anyway... Reid is still alive. Elle is still alive. The team is narrowing down their location. So no deaths.

I realize this story might not seem entirely plausible in parts (then again, many episodes of CM don't seem plausible to me, and that's partially why this is fan fiction...). When it comes to this story, that's largely due to two factors- I like to push characters to their limit and see how much they can take before they break, so even if an injury is quickly fatal 99% of the time I like to toy with characters surviving, etc. I can't toy with them as much as I'd like as MA fics are not permitted on this site so surviving severe physical injuries is one way I do that. Also, this story in particular was in part inspired by the Wes Craven movie "**The People Under the Stairs**" (_not_ the episode Moseley lane, actually, which I have never seen the entire way through), which is a really dark and gory movie (_apparently_... I find it funny, but it's probably best to call it dark and gory as most people tell me that's how they think of it), but one I've loved since I was a small child.

Please read and review. And no, this is not a death fic or a tragedy. At least not for Reid, or any of the other team members, or Elle (I've grown to like that character now).

Thanks for the compliments and the construcive criticism- ALL of it is much appreciated. Don't worry, medical help is coming for both Reid and Elle soon (they have been suffering from their injuries for about 2 hours now, so Elle is really sick at this point), but I just want to repeat- this fic_ isn't_ a tragedy.

-Lexikal


	4. Chapter 4: Help

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Four)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None. And no, this story wasn't/isn't based on Mosley (Moseley? I've seen it spelled a few different ways now) Lane from season 5, despite some superficial similarities. I had the idea for this story about 2 years ago, but didn't have the time/energy/will (maybe I am just lazy?) to try to write it until now.

**Warnings:** Dark themes (hey, this is a _**Criminal Minds**_fic, if you want dragons or something cute go read... honestly, I don't know, because I don't read cute, fluffy things, but I am sure some genres deal with that stuff), general violence involving kids and Reidy-boy, the usual stuff a story would be rated M for. Don't read if under 16, and if you are under 16 and not supposed to be reading M or you are sensitive and don't like dark themes, don't complain to me. Then again, if you don't like stories that deal with the darker side of human nature, I am not sure why you'd be a _**Criminal Minds**_ fan in the first place... Also, I should warn that in this chapter the team profiles Daddy/Edward White and speculates that he may be impotent (the reason behind the kidnappings) and that Reid may have been sexually assaulted. _There isn't any non-con in this story_, but the team speculates that there might be (specifically Hotch, Morgan and Rossi). So if that might bug you, again, don't read. _**You have been warned.**_

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish, is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please read the first chapter for the full summary and author's notes... This summary really does bite, but if you've read the first three chapters you'll know what this is about.

**Author's Note:** Thanks for all the kind reviews and the occasional bits of constructive crit! I appreciate it HUGELY when someone drops me a sentence or two to tell me if they liked a story of mine... lets me know if I am moving in the right direction. Thanks again for reading and reviewing! I especially love 1) When people tell me what they _specifically_ like about a story (lets me practice those skills and hopefully become a better writer) and 2) any clichés or parts of the story they find trite or overdone (it's easy to fall into certain cliché traps!)... Thanks again guys!

* * *

_**Nothing's alright/ Nothing is fine/ I'm running and I'm crying...- **__"This is my Last Resort" by Papa Roach_

"Wheels up in five," Hotch yelled to the team, bursting into the bullpen. His agents looked up, startled.

"Hotch, what's going on?" Morgan asked, already scrambling for his go-bag.

"The UnSub..._Daddy_, is on the line with Garcia right now, playing games. Pretending to be a concerned neighbour," Hotch said darkly. "The address is 40 minutes away by car if we break every known speed limit; the jet'll be faster."

"The_ UnSub_ is still on the line with_ Garcia_?" Morgan asked worriedly, glancing toward the computer tech's closed office door. Hotch nodded.

"He must know something is up by now, that Garcia is stalling him... these people aren't _stupid_ Hotch," Morgan said. Rossi had gotten his go-bag, as had J.J. and Prentiss, and they were walking quickly towards the elevators.

"I know. They've taunted the police before, but to phone from an actual address, to let us trace him, hear his voice... something has changed, something _significant_..."

Morgan nodded and swallowed hard, that all-too-familiar clog starting to form in his throat.

"We've already speculated that _Mommy_ is psychotic, that _Daddy_ enables her for some reason. If something happened to one of the children, perhaps one_ Daddy_ has become emotionally attached to, that might be a reason for him to phone in, to seek out our help..."

"You think one of the kids was hurt?"

"Yes. And probably badly. But not dead, not _yet_. No point reaching out for help for a corpse. Considering Lise Miller was involved in Reid's abduction and, to our knowledge, was the first child these people kidnapped and the one that has been kept alive the longest, I am betting that Lise is injured." Hotch finished.

Morgan thought back to the little girl in the amusement park, dark blue eyes, pale face. She'd looked innocent until she'd handed him the envelope, and then he'd had a hard time thinking of her as anything but an accomplice in Reid's abduction. But the truth was, she was just a child. She was far more vulnerable than Reid.

* * *

"Garcia?" Hotch addressed the computer screen when they were in the air.

"Sir. He's still on the line. Babbling about roses. On hold for the moment."

"Good. He give you anything we can use, baby doll?" Morgan asked hopefully.

"I help track these psychos by tracking down records over the internet, my love," Garcia told Morgan flatly. "I don't- thank god- get inside their heads. But this guy is giving me real Ed Gein vibes. And you know about my clown phobia."

"Garcia, what else have you got for us?" Hotch prompted. He knew Garcia was nervous, that being stuck on the other end with an UnSub and being forced to make nice with one of Reid's captors was its own sort of torture for the tech. But he had to keep her focused.

"Well, Edward White himself isn't giving me much, but I did some checking online. Apparently 6 years ago Dolores White, who was 39 back then, gave birth to a daughter...except..."

"_What_, Garcia?" Hotch insisted.

"The doctors insisted on a c-section, Dolores, a devout Catholic, insisted that God... uh... the baby was delivered vaginally, against medical advice. She... didn't make it."

"That was the stressor," Rossi said glancing over at Hotch. Hotch nodded.

"And 3 years ago, Lise Miller disappears, after her parents are murdered execution style."

"Garcia, where were the Whites living 6 years ago? When the baby died?"

"Uhhh... just a second. Brooklyn, New York. I can give you an exact address..."

"No, Garcia, that's okay. Thanks. Both Edward and Dolores... what are their hair and eye colors?"

"Both blond, Edward a bit darker than his wife. Both blue eyed."

Hotch thought for a moment, mind racing. They were already descending, the flight had taken just over 7 minutes.

"Was there a name on the death certificate for the White baby?"

"Uh...yes... _Elle Dolores White_."

"Thanks Garcia, we're about to land. Remember, keep _him_ on the line..."

"Yessir."

And the computer screen went blank.

Hotch gazed over at the group.

"Their baby dying in New York was the stressor, at least for Dolores White," Hotch said pensively. "3 years later they abducted a child that physically resembled the child they had lost at birth."

"And who also would've been nearly the same age," J.J. added, feeling cold. Hotch nodded.

"Their baby dying in New York also explains why all the children they have murdered, for whatever reason, have been dumped there. For these UnSubs, New York is associated with failure and death."

"So they're trying to recreate their family... abduct children that resemble their daughter? But then... why take more than one? Or kill them for that matter?" Prentiss asked.

"I believe that once they abducted Lise Miller, they became collectors... Lise does represent their dead baby, Elle, which is why she is still... most _likely_... alive. The only reason I can think of for Edward White phoning us directly is that her life is in immediate danger. To Edward, Lise has _become_ his daughter, flesh and blood."

"Which is pretty psychotic," Morgan muttered.

"Yeah, but he still realizes that without medical attention, Lise-who has probably been renamed _Elle_-is _capable_ of dying. Dolores White is incapable of grasping that Lise can physically die because Lise has always simply been a proxy for her daughter, but also a proxy for her rage... her rage against her own infant for dying, against God, possibly the doctors themselves. These children have become dolls to her, and when one malfunctions or breaks, the only way to fix the situation and get back the perfect child they lost is to replace the doll... get rid of the defective child and take a new one..." Hotch stopped speaking.

The jet began to skid on the runway. They had touched down.

The agents were quickly off the jet, breaking into teams. The local police already had cruisers waiting and Hotch had phoned ahead and requested ambulances to meet them at the residence.

"Morgan and Rossi, you're with me," Hotch said. "Prentiss, go with J.J."

* * *

"I still don't get it, why take boys," Morgan asked as they sped towards the address. "Or Reid, for that matter?"

"They probably are trying to create the ideal family. Not only has Dolores White become obsessed with finding the perfect_ daughter_, but now she wants the perfect _family_, which in the nuclear sense includes sons as well as daughters..." Hotch was looking steely-eyed ahead. The estimated time of arrival at the residence was a little under 8 minutes.

"And _Daddy_... then he would be subservient? Even though he plans the abductions and carries them out?" Morgan was still profiling, still dissecting the UnSubs. Hotch nodded.

"His wife's rage probably terrifies him, he probably feels impotent. He may even be impotent, physically. He has control over the actual abductions- she doesn't care about the selection process in that respect, just as long as she continues to receive her_ dolls_. He- Edward White- has developed a twisted sense of power and self-respect from the abduction process, from the fear he instils in the kidnap victims. Being able to kidnap these children also makes him feel important, especially _if_ he is physically impotent. Impotence might also explain why they simply didn't have another child after their daughter's birth, and also why all of the murdered children we have found were tortured with knives and cut with them post-mortem."

"Garcia would've mentioned if Edward White had a medical history of trouble in bed," Morgan said.

Rossi, who had been silent and pensive for all of the flight and most of the drive, glanced over at Morgan.

"If he is impotent, there almost certainly won't be a medical record of it. These are the type of people who, even previous to the wife's breakdown and subsequent psychosis, believed in keeping one's dirty laundry private, so to speak." Rossi said.

Morgan nodded. Thought about what he'd just been told about impotence. Dolores White couldn't have another biological child, in all likelihood. If not because she was barren, as they'd already considered, than because her husband was impotent. It made sense, actually, but they hadn't known the identity of their UnSubs an hour ago, let alone the fact their child had died. If Edward White was impotent, what did that mean as far as Reid was concerned?

Morgan shuddered... even with Reid's baby-face, there was no way in hell he could pass for a child, for Lise's older brother.

"The older boy, Connor, is 15. Pubescent. And Reid is _27_... If Edward White is impotent and Dolores..." Morgan didn't have to finish his sentence. Hotch was staring at him with stony eyes. He nodded tightly.

Morgan stared back at Hotch, and not for the first time since he'd joined the BAU, he was glad he had dark skin. It made it harder for his colleagues to tell when he blanched from fear.

Morgan also understood, then, why Hotch had suggested J.J. and Prentiss ride in the other vehicle. If something of a sexual nature had happened to Reid... well, as long as they UnSubs were caught, there was no need for the women to know about it.

* * *

Elle wasn't talking to him anymore. Reid tried to estimate how long it had been since he'd been shot, since Elle had been shot. But he's passed out, so that made it virtually impossible to estimate. 2 hours? 2 and a half? Something like that. She'd been talking to him just a minute ago, and then her voice had become garbled. Weaker. Like a light bulb dimming. Before flickering out altogether.

"Elle?" Reid asked, hands moving in the dark. He pressed two fingers to her neck. Nothing. He couldn't find a pulse.

"ELLE?" Nothing. No response. No movement. Her body had become increasingly colder as he'd held her, until he'd felt her shivering, her teeth actually chattering. She'd told him she was tired. She was thirsty. Now, no more complaints. She wasn't shivering anymore.

"Elle, come on, wake up, _come on_," Reid begged. 3 doctorates, 2 bachelor degrees, and no medical training besides the most basic university requisites. Why hadn't he become a doctor in addition to an FBI agent? Reid was shaking. He shifted the child out of his arms and placed her on the ground, squinting in the near-darkness. His hands and arms looked black, from what he could tell, covered in his and the child's blood.

Oh god. She was dying. Or she was dead.

He wanted to scream for help, but that wouldn't do any good. The UnSubs wouldn't care. They'd murdered children, but then... they'd also had had Elle for a while.

"_Help_!" Reid screamed, still trying to feel for a pulse in the dark, getting nothing. His hands traced down to the small wrists, looking anywhere for a sign of life. _Please let her be alive. Please let her be okay. Not now. Not in the dark. Don't let her die for no reason, not in the dark, not never knowing goodness... don't let her die when she'd been ready to die to let me escape. Please God..._

Reid was praying out loud. He hadn't realized until, distantly, he heard his own words bounce back at him, as if on a time delay. He screamed louder. "HELP!"

He felt over her chest, nervous, remembering the CPR he'd taken as a kid, and then again as a young adult, and then _again_ at the academy. God. His hands were shaking.

In the pitch black, Reid tilted the 6-year-old head back. Leaned down, listening, feeling for breath. Her breathing_. Nothing._

"Oh God, Elle, no, you're _not_ going to die..." he was panicking, his voice high and tight, and some distant part of his mind remarked blandly: _You know, you sounded almost like this when Nathan Harris was bleeding out? Remember that, Spencer?_

Her mouth was open. Airway clear. But she wasn't breathing. There was no pulse.

"CPR, right," Reid said, his own heart racing. "_Different_ for kids under 8. Oh God..." Reid knew CPR for kids over 8. And Adults.

"Smaller lungs. Smaller lung capacity. Two breaths." He found it easier to keep it together hearing his voice delivering the commands to him. He pinched Elle's noise and breathed into her mouth quickly, two shallow breaths, trying to see in the dark if her chest rose. It was hard to tell.

"Check circulation now," Reid told himself sternly, hating the way his voice trembled. His hands were shaking even harder. "Elle, come on, come _on_..."

Reid pressed two fingers back to the carotid again. Waited 5 seconds. 6 seconds. At the 10 second mark and still no pulse, he knew he had to start chest compressions.

Oh God. She was going to die... she might already be dead. She had lost_ so_ much blood...oh _god..._

Spencer Reid started chest compressions then.

* * *

They didn't bother with a soft entry. The second they were out of the car, Hotch led point and the rest of his team followed, flanked by SWAT. There were also half a dozen police cars and two ambulances, not to mention a growing crowd of neighbours and on-lookers. No vehicles in the driveway of the residence.

It took Hotch only one kick to get the door in. They didn't even need the ram.

Hotch and Rossi were still leading, yelling "clear" as they proceeded through each room and finding it empty. The house was rather large but dusty, musty, smelling of lemon pledge and cigarettes and bleach. Over the mantle were photographs of children. Dozens and dozens of different children. Hotch walked over to the mantle and quickly scanned the photos, before quickly seeing Lise Miller staring back at him with haunted eyes. Connor Stephens. Duncan Marshall.

They had the right place.

But so far no UnSubs. No kids. No _Reid_.

"Reid!" Hotch screamed. He couldn't hear anything. Nothing. They swept the rooms, down the hallway toward what looked like a basement door.

Except the basement door was steel, and the wall around it looked like cinderblock. They weren't going to be able to kick that down. Or even use the ram... if it was locked, they'd have to take more drastic measures to... Hotch approached. If Edward White had phoned because Lise..._Elle_... was injured, she might be down there. They might have cleared out with the rest of the kids, but left this door unlocked. Hotch sped up, tested the door.

Hotch had told Garcia to keep Edward White on the phone. Either he had hung up after they'd gotten off the plane, which would've given him a 10 minute advantage on them, or he, at the very least, was still in the house.

Hotch nudged the door. Breathed a sigh of relief. It swung open. Hotch felt the side of the wall for a switch. Found it. Flicked it.

The room was instantly full of buzzing, fluorescent light.

"Oh, god," Prentiss murmured, staring in horror at all the power tools, the hand tools, the wooden tables, the bathtub. In one corner of the room there was a cabinet with jars and... anatomical specimens floating in them. Like in a high school biology classroom.

Lying in the centre of the room was Edward White. There was a pool of blood surrounding his head like some gory halo. He'd shot himself. Probably when he'd heard them enter. Hotch could hear Garcia's voice talking worriedly through the cordless phone lying on the floor next to White's limp corpse. Hotch walked over to the phone, picked up the phone.

"Garcia, we're here. He shot himself."

"Reid?"

"We're still looking," Hotch said, and turned the phone off. Gazed around the workshop again, trying to breathe. The room reeked of urine and blood and other, unnameable substances. The place reeked out of death.

This was where Dolores White took out her rage on defective "dolls", apparently. Some of the tools hanging from the wall still had dried blood on them.

"Reid!" Hotch yelled again, louder, his eyes scanning the room for any sign of the young agent. For any sign of anybody...

And then he saw the door. Not steel, just wooden, and rather rickety looking at that. He all but ran to the door. Could hear someone screaming back to him.

"_Hotch_?" It was Spencer Reid's voice. "Hurry! Help!" Reid sounded panicked. Hotch all but ran to the door and kicked it in, flashlight out.

"Yeah, Reid," Hotch descended the staircase, flashlight beam trailing through the darkness. There.

Reid was sitting, covered in blood, saturated in the stuff, in what looked like hay. His face was the colour of chalk. In his hands was a bloody, blond little girl. Even paler than Reid. Lips blue.

"I...she was talking 5 or 6 minutes ago..." Reid slurred, looking up at Hotch with haunted eyes. "You have to help her!"

"Are you hurt, Reid?" Hotch said, walking quickly towards his agent. Morgan and Rossi had already called for a medic. Hotch bent in front of Spencer Reid, feeling him over for injuries.

Reid recoiled.

"_Reid_! Are you _hurt_?"

"She was talking just 5 or 6 minutes ago," Reid repeated numbly. Hotch nodded, glancing down again at the small, unmoving face. Lise Miller.

"Reid, is all this her blood? Or are you hurt too?"

"The female UnSub shot her in the stomach," Reid slurred dazedly. "About 2 hours ago, maybe 2 and half now. Something like that."

"But not you? You weren't hurt?" Hotch asked again, concern growing when Reid failed to answer. Hotch could hear the paramedics clambering down the stairs now.

"_Her heart is not beating_!" Reid called over to the paramedics when he got sight of them, his voice higher and strangled, pleading. "You _have_ to help her! She was talking 5 or 6 minutes ago, and she had a pulse 4 minutes ago. _Approximately_. She _needs_ blood... she has lost a _lot_ of blood. She _needs_ blood..."

"Reid, come on, let them take her..."

Reid was still holding onto the child as if he couldn't bear to let her go, as if letting her go would mean she'd die for sure.

"Reid, let them _help_ her," Hotch ordered again, shaking the younger man by the shoulder. And then he felt it. The hole. Spencer Reid had been shot in the shoulder. Reid recoiled again and made a noise like a muffled scream.

One of the paramedics took Elle then, loaded her onto a stretcher. They were moving fast, barking orders. Hotch helped Reid to his feet. From the way Reid was acting it was probably going to be easier to get him medical attention to let him walk out on his own.

* * *

Okay, more chapters to come, but at least Reid is safe, Elle is with the medics and one of the UnSubs is dead. From this point on the story is more about Reid's relationship with Elle (kind of cute, Reid being overprotective about a kid) and the team trying to track down "Mommy" and the remaining kids...

If you liked this, even a teensy, weensy bit, please review. If you didn't like it, you probably haven't read to this point...


	5. Chapter 5: Shocky

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Five)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None.

**Warnings:** Dark themes; violence; Hotch, Morgan and Rossi wonder whether Reid was sexually assaulted (raped) by a female UnSub (He wasn't, **there IS NO NON-CON** in this story, but the possibility of it is brought up)... this is rated M, if you are underage, please go away and watch "Akeelah and the Bee" or something, I don't know...

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish, is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.

**Author's Note:** Thanks for the reviews. I know I am ping-ponging between Reid's interaction with other team members, namely Hotch and Morgan. Oh well, my brain is a little (actually a LOT!) fuzzy these days due to some medical issues. Please excuse typos, grammatical errors, etc... I don't have a beta and I try to proof-read for obvious, blatant errors but I still, unfortunately, make too many mistakes.

Also, not everything Reid went through while he was missing/abducted has been "shown" to the audience yet (he was gone for over four days, yet there are only a few scenes covering the span of maybe 4 or 5 hours, but yes, more will be revealed with time...) On to chapter five...

**Note about song:** I have been calling the song "This is my last resort" by Papa Roach, I believe, for the first four chapters, but I am pretty sure the song is just "Last Resort" by Papa Roach. Sorry about that, guys.

**Updated note: **I posted while tired. I had to repost chapter 5, because in the 4th chapter (towards the end) Reid is shirtless, but there are 3 lines, which I have now erased, where Reid was in the ambulance having his sweater vest cut off (wrote chapter 5 when I was tired so I missed that goof).

* * *

_**Suffocation/ No breathing/ Don't give a fuck if my arm is bleeding...**__.-" Last Resort" by Papa Roach _

"Where's Elle?" Reid said, eyes darting around. He was sitting in the back of one of the ambulances, eyes somehow both shiny and glazed at the same time. Squinting as if he hadn't seen daylight in weeks, instead of days or hours. "Where is she? Is she okay? _Hotch_?"

Reid refused to lie down on the gurney. They were driving towards the hospital but not speeding, no sirens. Hotch sat across from Reid, profiling the case to the best of his ability by profiling the profiler. He had never seen Spencer Reid this distraught or disoriented (_he's dissociative, you know that_), not even after really heavy cases involving kids, hell, not even when Reid had been forced to kill someone in self-defence. He'd been upset after Hankel, had hugged him hard and Hotch had hugged back, but now Reid was shying away from touch. The paramedic's ministrations, for example.

He'd acted more normal after Hankel, and Hankel had beat and tortured him for 2 days. What the hell had happened this time to cause Reid to act like _this_?

"Sir," the paramedic said, addressing Reid. "Please stop..." The medic shot Hotch a look. Hotch reached out and took one of Reid's cold, blood-stained hands.

"Reid, _calm down_. Let the man look at your shoulder."

Reid seemed to have forgotten about the shoulder. He glanced toward the injury, as if Hotch were talking nonsense.

"Hotch, radio the other ambulance and see about Elle, see if she is..."

"The little girl with you? Her name was Elle?" Hotch asked carefully. Reid nodded emphatically. Okay. So they had been right about that. About the name-switch.

"Make sure she is okay. Can't you radio them?"

"Reid, I don't work for the ambulance service," Hotch said curtly. "Now let the man look at your shoulder."

"My shoulder is_ fine_..."

But apparently it wasn't. Gloved hands prodded and Reid let out a low hiss of a scream.

"Well, the bullet didn't go through, so they're going to need to dig it out," the paramedic told Reid conversationally, as if they were discussing a sports game. "And of course they're going to need to stitch you up and...sir, I need to put an IV in..."

"I thought the bullet went in and out," Reid said tiredly. "It felt like it did."

"No exit wound," the medic said in the same calm, conversational tone. "I need to get started on your IV now..."

They had tried to put an IV in Reid when they'd first gotten him in the ambulance and he'd pulled away, first claiming he didn't need one, then that he'd wait until the hospital. Finally he sighed and held out his hand. The paramedic nodded gratefully and went about preparing the tourniquet and swabbing Reid's hand.

"No pain meds," Reid said then, staring at the paramedic intently. The medic looked slightly taken aback and glanced over at Hotch. Hotch just nodded as if to say: _yeah, yeah, that's fine. You got your IV, don't push him on the narcotics._

"Sir...pain meds..."

"I said _no_," Reid repeated adamantly. The paramedic shrugged.

"They're going to want to numb your shoulder before stitching you up... that's if you don't need surgery."

"_Surgery_?" Reid coughed out with a laugh, as if it were a joke. "For a gunshot wound to the shoulder?"

"Sir, despite what you might think, being shot is kind of a big deal," the paramedic said mildly.

Reid turned back to Hotch, apparently done with talking to the paramedic. Spencer Reid's pupils were huge, his expression... well... it was eerie. As if something in his mind, something precious, something called sanity, had been stabbed a few times. Or at least bruised badly. Hotch was reminded of the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland as he sat in the back of the ambulance and looked at his agent. Hotch felt an uneasiness uncurling in his stomach like a slowly waking snake.

"Hotch, phone the hospital then, and ask about Elle, okay? Her ambulance was going a lot faster, they'll know by now, maybe..."

"Reid, calm down," Hotch said in his best,_ you better listen to me, I know what's best for you_ tone of voice.

"I am calm!" Reid snapped. And then they were there, at the hospital. The ambulance came to a stop.

"Sir, I am going to have to ask you to lie down. Just so we can transport you..."

"Hotch... I _want_ to sit up..."

Aaron Hotchner sighed. Looked over at the paramedic. The paramedic sighed and nodded.

"Okay, we'll tilt the gurney so you're sitting up, okay? But we have to strap you in..." the paramedic explained to Reid, as if he were a child.

"Hotch, just go see about Elle!"

* * *

Reid was fast-tracked through the ER and into a treatment room very quickly. The bullet had gone straight into the muscle without shattering any bone. He was lucky, apparently.

Hotch could hear Reid babbling about Elle as he entered the treatment room. Reid was sitting shirtless on an exam table, his pale chest smudged with blood; both his own and the child's. He'd obviously- _hopefully_- been numbed because stitches were being put in his shoulder. The bullet and some blood and what looked like small clots of coagulated blood were sitting in a small, stainless steel bowl. Evidence, apparently.

"Did you hear about Elle, Hotch?" Reid all but shouted when his boss entered. "Is she okay?"

"She's critical right now, but she's alive," Hotch said carefully.

"She lost a lot of blood," Reid said, like a broken record. Hotch nodded again. Watched the doctor put in a few more stitches. He'd already spoken to another doctor in the ER about the case, about his potential... concerns. Involving Reid, and the UnSub.

If something like that... if Reid had been violated that would go a long way to explaining his strange behaviour.

"Okay, just a few more, and you're done, Agent Reid," the doctor stitching him up said gently. Reid's IV was hanging above his head, and he'd also been hooked up to a bag of O negative. Already, he was looking a little less ghostly.

"Then we'll move you to a bed-"

"Bed? I don't need a bed. I just..."

The doctor and Hotch exchanged glances. "Reid, they want to observe you overnight."

"That's unnecessary."

"Reid, you were in shock when we found you. You're still severely dehydrated and pale. It's not unnecessary," Hotch said calmly, glancing at the doctor. The doctor put in the last stitch and tied it off.

"How bad is Elle? Did they need to operate?"

"She's in the OR now," Hotch said, pulling a chair from the corner of the room and sitting down. The doctor who was stitching Reid up finished and began to dress the wound.

There was a knock on the door and another doctor, a male, entered.

"Agent Reid, my name is Dr. Charles Anders. I work with male assault victims here at the hospital. S.S.A. Hotchner thought you'd prefer a male doctor..."

Reid's eyes literally tripled in size. "What? What do you mean by assault _victim_?" Reid asked suspiciously. "Why would I prefer a male doctor to look at a gunshot wound to my..." and then Reid trailed off. Dead Silence. Any colour he'd gained from the IV and the blood transfusion quickly drained back out of his face.

"You're talking about... Hotch... is he talking about what I _think_ he is?" Reid said warily, eyes narrowed.

"Reid..._Spencer_... you were taken. You are an adult male. Our profile suggests that Edward White... may have been impotent and that you were taken because..."

"No, no, no, no, _no_!" Reid sputtered, recoiling on the exam table. He stood up unsteadily, holding onto his IV pole. "Nothing like_ that_ happened!"

"Reid, we need to check. You were shot. You were unconscious... and you were drugged at least once by these people..."

"No, Hotch, that's _not_ why they took me..."

"Reid, if nothing happened, why are you acting like this?"

"Acting like _what_, Hotch?" Reid roared, suddenly furious. "How _should_ I act after four and a half days of being locked up and seeing children cowering in the dark, half-starved and seeing the human remains of children in jars and one little girl tortured for trying to get me drinking water and then shot because I messed up and tried to attack an UnSub with a meat cleaver? How exactly should I act right now? You tell me, because I really don't know!"

"Reid, it makes no sense for them to take you if not for this... _purpose_. We've seen cases like this before. And no one would think any differently of you..."

"Nothing like that happened, Hotchner!" Reid yelled, louder now, eyes blazing. Hotch couldn't remember the last time Spencer Reid had called him by his full last name.

"Then just submit to the physical. Then we'll know for sure," Hotch said simply, staring hard. He had to get Reid to submit. If he didn't... he didn't want to think about what it would be like for Reid if they had to force this on him.

"_No_," Reid snarled, and moved forward with his IV pole, still shirtless but his bloody pants still on.

"Agent Reid, I promise just to take a look. This won't be a physical in the sense you're probably thinking of. From what I've been told about this case, you weren't attacked by a man, but..."

"I wasn't attacked by _anyone_!" Reid snarled.

"Bodies will react when touched," the doctor continued calmly. "And if you were drugged and then violated... you nerve endings wouldn't know the difference. It is possible. You need to be tested for DNA traces, for STDs..."

"_No_,"

The doctor looked over at Hotch tiredly. He hadn't expected this much resistance.

* * *

They sent Morgan in to speak to Reid. Reid had been given a fresh pair of pants and underwear to wear and the usual hospital gown. He was sitting up on the hospital bed.

"Hey, kid," Morgan said gently. "It won't be that bad,"

"I don't care how bad it will be. It's a waste of time. It's detracting from the real profile. _That_... never happened."

"Reid, if that is true... look, you know we can't let this drop. There is no other reason why they would've taken you..."

"Even if that were true... if they started taking older males in preparation for... you _know_. It still never happened. Not yet... not to _me_."

"Reid, you haven't showered yet. You haven't even used the washroom. If there is any DNA..."

Reid hung his head low. He was tired. Tired of struggling. They were just going to keep hounding him until he gave in. Until they realized that he'd been taken for another purpose, the profile would be wrong. Incomplete.

"_Fine_. Tell them to make it fast," Reid couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice. He'd never felt so betrayed by his own team. Logically he knew they were just doing their job. Emotionally, he just wanted to get away from all of them.

Morgan nodded, very subtly. Walked back out of the room.

* * *

"No DNA evidence found, no fluids or secretions, no signs of any STDs..." Hotch read the results to the team. They were back at the field office, except for Reid, who was at home regaining some of his strength and drinking boost meal replacements. 2 days had passed. They'd rushed the rape kit on Reid. _Nothing._

Reid had been _right._ Their profile had been _wrong._ And they were back at square one.

There was an uneasy tension amongst all of them now. Prentiss and even JJ had brought up the possibility- independently of Hotch- that Reid may have been violated, and Hotch had _had_ to tell them. Share the information with them. Or they would've wondered what he was hiding.

Reid was blunt on the phone, answering questions with monosyllabic responses. When Hotch had phoned and told him the results of the rape kit, Reid's eloquent response, to Hotch's immense surprise, had been: "Screw you, Hotch." And then he'd hung up.

No, not _bitter_...

The only survivors of Ed and Dolores White's madness at their disposal were Reid and the little girl, Elle. She was still in the ICU on antibiotics, but expected to make a full recovery. Miraculously.

"Reid should interview Elle," Hotch said as they sat around the table, talking the case over. "Elle already knows Reid, she was involved in his kidnapping, and they were shot seconds apart. There is a bond there and even if it's based in trauma... all of you saw Reid when we got to him. He was hysterical at the thought that she might be dead."

"Are you sure it's a good idea for Reid to interview Elle? They may be too close, and I am not certain Reid can remain objective right now," Rossi said, glancing over at Hotch. Hotch sighed.

"J.J. went to the hospital earlier to talk to her," Hotch said glancing over at J.J. to continue.

"She refused to speak to me. Asked if I knew_ Spencer_, when I said I did, she said good, that she'd only talk to him," J.J. finished.

"So it's not a matter about them having a bond," Rossi exhaled tiredly. "She refuses to speak to us, and right now, apparently, Reid shares her sentiments."

"Reid's just...pissed off. He'll get over it." Morgan said softly, thinking back to the time when the team had found out about his past, about his youth, about Carl Buford. About how angry at God he had felt, how certain he was that the team were looking at him with looks of pity. Even when they weren't.

* * *

"Reid, man, I know you're home..." Morgan was standing outside Reid's door, a bag of carry-out in one hand, two additional bags in the other. He could see lights on inside. Plus, it was 9:30 at night, and Reid wasn't exactly a party animal or the type to cruise bars for chicks.

"Reid? C'mon, man, I got _three_ different types of take-out, in case the first two weren't up to your sophisticated palate..."

The door opened suddenly. Reid's eyes, always rather dark underneath, stared out angrily. More than two days later and the kid was still ticked.

"I've already eaten, so I guess you wasted your money."

"Kid, c'mon, at least let me inside?"

"Morgan, I am not in the mood for chit chat right now. Hotch told me I have to take a week off, so I am. I am following his orders, like _always_..."

Morgan wanted to roll his eyes. Spencer Reid follow orders? Who was the kid trying to fool? Morgan had the good sense to keep his mouth shut, though.

"Reid, please man..."

A deep, heavy sigh. Morgan heard Reid pull the chain off his door. The living room was a mess, books scattered everywhere. Status quo, in other words.

"Reid, nobody wanted to hurt you. Hotch would've been investigated if he hadn't looked at that angle of the profile."

"Are you done?"

"Elle's awake... will only speak to you."

Reid was silent when he heard this, absorbing quietly.

"Hotch said not to come in for a week," Reid repeated after a moment.

"Look, now that we have found you and Edward White is dead, the pressure is heating up. Dolores was dangerous before, but Edward tempered that somewhat. He wasn't completely out of touch with reality, and while dangerous, he was also highly organized. There is no indication that any of the children died or were killed accidentally or during the abduction process. Dolores on the other hand..."

"Did Hotch tell you to come here?" Reid asked after a moment. Morgan sighed.

"No. But he's worried about you. Obviously."

Reid decided to ignore that last comment.

"So what, then? He doesn't want me to come into work, but he wants you to come over here and pick my brain?"

"There was a reason you were taken," Morgan said slowly, staring Reid straight in the eyes, "And you more than anyone know that if we were to overlook victimology here, we wouldn't be doing our job. Why you? Why these specific kids? Elle was a proxy for their own child, sure..."

Reid had been briefed on the case, on Elle's true identity in the last two days. Garcia had faxed him over what they knew about the six year old.

"But why the other kids? Apart from the fact they wanted to create this perfect nuclear family, or have a store of kids so they could pick and chose at random when one of them became defective, why take the kids they did? Besides the fact they were all Caucasian, nothing else ties them together. Not sex, eye colour, hair colour... not even age or location of birth."

"Morgan, I can't tell you what I don't know. For most of the time I was tied up in that straw filled basement, and for a brief while was up in the dungeon- what they called the dungeon- but you know all of this already. I don't know why they chose the kids they did. I don't even know why they took a police officer before me, and then worked up to FBI..."

"What?" Morgan asked sharply. Had he just heard Reid correctly?

"Yeah... _what_? You didn't find the body on the property?"

They had found 8 skeletons buried in the earth in what Elle had called the Oubliette, care of ground-penetrating radar, thick slabs of concrete poured over each small body.

"No. All we found were children's skeletons, 8 in the ground... concrete poured over them, and the skeleton of the boy in the corner that you mentioned, of course. Reid... a _police officer_?"

"It's what Elle said," Reid admitted, a little disturbed himself, now. "That before me, Edward White had kidnapped _a young policeman like me_," Reid quoted. "Apparently the victim tried to escape, stole a gun, and was killed by Edward White, along with two children named Edgar and Paula..."

"The coroner did say that of the 8 skeletons found in the ground, four were female and four male," Morgan replied. Reid nodded.

"Reid, if they took a police officer before you... this... I don't know what this is, but if it's true, and they killed him..."

Reid nodded solemnly. Every time this profile seemed to make a bit of sense, part of it would crumble away and they were back at square one.

"I'll... I'll talk to Hotch first thing in the morning. I probably don't have to tell you that he's going to want you to talk to the girl..."

Reid licked his lips nervously. Nodded.

* * *

Ahhh, I was hoping I could write more by Halloween 2010. I'll try to get another 2-3 chapters up before Halloween, (and a few chapters for "The Blue Boy", plus there are a few one-shot stories I want to work on). Please rate and review.

Thanks.


	6. Chapter 6: Revelations

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Six)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None.

**Warnings:** Dark themes; violence; missing children/implied child abuse,_** a child who behaves like an UnSub**_, lots of Reid angst

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish, is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.

**Author's Note:** I actually enjoy working on this story more than "The Blue Boy" ("The Blue Boy" is also getting pretty sad, although, for those that are reading it, I guarantee it is not a death fic or tragedy). Also, if anyone thinks Elle has symptoms of RAD (reactive attachment disorder) or gets that vibe in this chapter, I'll consider my portrayal of that character, in particular, a success.

Also, in case anyone has noticed, I have paired lyrics from the song "Last Resort" by Papa Roach to each chapter, and I tried to make the lyrics for each chapter appropriate/significant to what took place in that chapter.

* * *

_**It all started when I lost my Mother/ No love for myself/ And no love for another...-**__ "Last Resort" by Papa Roach_

Reid was nervous. He wasn't sure why, exactly, but he was, and it had something to do with talking to Elle. A traumatized six year old in the ICU. Morgan had phoned from the BAU headquarters, spoken to Hotch, and Hotch had decided to "let" Reid come back to work a few days early... as long as he ate regularly and spent the days at the office, helping Garcia, doing paperwork. Nothing strenuous. He wasn't cleared for field duty. Not yet. His arm was still in a sling, and would be for a while.

But he had been cleared to talk to Elle. And so, it was Morgan who drove Reid down to the hospital, with J.J. in the back... J.J. because she was a woman, but also blonde haired and blue eyed like Elle. Hotch and Rossi both held out hope that Elle might, _somewhat_, identify with J.J. based on her physical characteristics. Elle had delivered the envelope to Morgan, so he was another good choice. For whatever reason, Morgan didn't threaten her. Possibly because her "parents", the only parents she had ever known, had been Caucasian and Morgan was black.

And then, of course, there was Reid.

They stopped at the hospital's information desk and signed in. Due to the media coverage and the fact that Dolores White was still on the loose Elle's room was being guarded 24-7 by police. Just in case.

The trio got into the elevator and Reid repeatedly hammered the button for the paediatric ICU floor. Reid fiddled with buttons on his shirt as the elevator slowly rose; his hands sweaty and cold. Finally their floor arrived, the doors opening with a low yawning noise.

The walls were painted yellow, and the entire floor had a childish feel to it. Reid proceeded to the Nurse's station, trailed by both J.J. and Morgan and flashed his badge.

"We're here to speak to Elle?" Reid said.

Because the child had been kidnapped at three, she didn't have a legal last name and therefore couldn't be processed as Elle Dolores White. Elle Dolores White, after all, had died at birth. However, because she had been declared dead shortly after her disappearance and the murder of her parents, she also couldn't be processed as Lise Miller. Usually a child in such a situation would be referred to as a Jane Doe until the courts sorted the matter out, but Elle had a name, a name she knew and responded to. The case was high-profile enough that the nurse didn't need a last name. She just nodded, smiling.

"Very brave little girl. And so resilient." The nurse led them down a hallway, to a room. A policeman was standing in front of the door, looking bored. Reid, J.J. and Morgan each flashed their credentials and the policeman nodded, and let them in.

The television was on. That was the first thing Reid noticed. Some cartoon station. Elle was lying in bed, holding a plush monkey and staring at the television with a funny little smile on her face.

She glanced up at the sound of footsteps, eyes going wide when she saw Reid.

"Spencer! I thought you'd _died_!"

She was still hooked up to an IV and what looked like a banana bag- a pack of IV fluids that was a medium yellow colour full of vitamins and nutrients.

Spencer smiled weakly and sat down. Elle glanced over at Morgan and then at J.J. and frowned.

"No, I didn't die. Why would you think that?" Reid said, grabbing one of the chairs in the room and pulling it over to the child's bed.

"Because you were gone for a _long_ time, and didn't come to see _me_," Elle said simply, as if the answer were obvious.

"I'm sorry you were worried about me," Reid said earnestly, leaning forward. "I was really worried about you too. Especially when you stopped talking."

"I stopped talking?"

"Yes. Don't you remember?" He didn't want to do this. Drag this child through these memories again. But he had to start somewhere if he was ever going to be able to really profile Elle... and she_ had_ had a part in his abduction. She'd distracted Prentiss, Hotch and Morgan the day Edward White had injected him in the leg. She'd hand-delivered her "Father's" taunting message to the police, and for all they knew, she may have written the note they'd found inside.

"I remember it being dark. Mommy shot you in the shoulder."

"You don't remember being shot?" Reid asked gently. Elle shrugged. Looked back at the television, apparently indifferent.

"This show is boring," she murmured after a moment, and changed the channel with a small remote control, that, until then, had been hidden in the folds of her hospital blanket. She flipped through the channels until she got to some history program. Black and white scenes of World War 2 suddenly flooded the screen; emaciated, slack jawed corpses in shallow, frozen trenches. Elle gawked at the footage, expression blank. Reid watched her, then turned and looked over at Derek and J.J., who were also both watching the child. Elle gazed over. Found J.J. and Morgan watching her and scowled at them.

"What are _they_ doing here?"

"Elle, these are my friends," Reid said slowly, pointing. "This is J.J., and this is Derek-"

"I don't want to talk to them!" Elle snapped, hiding her face behind the plush monkey.

"Okay. Let me go have a word with them, and then you and I... we'll just talk? Okay?"

Elle glanced out from behind the toy. "Just us, Spencer? _Big Brother_?"

Reid smiled and nodded, but something was wrong. The child who had told him what to do in the oubliette, who had been punished by being beaten and left in ice water, who he'd cradled after being shot in the stomach... that child had been feisty, stroppy. This child was timid, almost phobic. Of course, she was out of her element, had probably never been in a hospital before, let alone questioned and examined by doctors and shrinks and social workers, but still, something was niggling inside Spencer Reid's brain.

Strange that she had stopped the television on a history show documenting the atrocities of the Second World War, but that could be explained. Elle had personally seen children die. Had probably seen a few starve to death. To see death and human cruelty on the television like that, unannounced... of course she had stopped. Stared. Gawked. Who wouldn't?

Reid would have to have a talk with the nurses about maybe putting some sort of parental control mechanism on the television remote. Kid-friendly stations only. Elle had seen enough horror to last a life-time.

Elle was still staring at the black and white film footage, the hordes of bodies.

"Elle, why don't you put the cartoon back on? That... that sort of television... I don't think you need to see that right now," Reid ventured uncertainly.

"Okay, Spencer," The child said, smiling, and flicked the channel back to Sponge-bob. Reid sighed and motioned to J.J. and Morgan to follow him out of the room.

* * *

They pitched their voices low.

"Reid, I'm not a child psychologist, but I think that child is suffering from a lot more than just..."

"They took her when she was three, Morgan!" Reid interjected before Morgan could say anything. "She was the first. She's been there the longest, seen the most death, probably been forced to commit..."

"All I'm saying is that it wouldn't hurt for us to have her evaluated by a child psychiatrist."

"She was just shot in the stomach."

"She's obsessed with violence," J.J. interjected gently, softly, voice just above a whisper. "Yet displays a flat affect."

"Guys, she's _six_, and was almost killed a few days ago..." Reid trailed, but in his gut, he knew their instincts were right. "Of course she's obsessed with violence. Who wouldn't be?"

"Reid, if she was taken at three... Reid, three year olds are still forming attachments- bonds- to their mothers. And I know you know that, Kid, and I know you know where I am going with this. They are at the tail end of the bonding process, as you know, but there is still the possibility that she developed an attachment disorder, to say the least. Seeing her biological parents murdered, and then being raised by those murderers and seeing on regular basis what they are capable of..."

Reid shook his head. "She risked her life to try and get me water."

"Kid, you're too close to this. If I'm right, if J.J.'s right...she might play you."

"She's six years old, Morgan!" Reid said again. Six years old. Six! Six year olds were innocent. Damn it, Morgan,_ innocent_! Except... Spencer Reid knew better than anyone that that wasn't necessarily true. Unfortunately.

The cop was staring at them now, at their whispered, slightly angry debate in the hall.

"At any rate, she will only talk to me," Reid exhaled. He knew on a level he didn't want to consciously admit that they were right. That Elle's behaviour, what he had seen, was just the tip of the iceberg. That when she had played the light from the flashlight over the child skeleton in the corner, swinging it lazily to and fro, that something was wrong. The way she had had prodded Reid in the ribs... hard. He struggled to think back, to when he'd first been taken. The van. She had done something to him in the van too. At Edward White's insistence, but she'd done it. Reid shut his eyes.

And then, he remembered. She'd smashed him in the skull as hard as she possibly could with a mag-lite flashlight. He'd seen stars. Felt like vomiting. She hadn't had to hit him that hard, had she? And when "Daddy" had praised her, she'd responded with "Thanks."

"I-she'll only talk to me," Reid said, shaking his head, as if clearing away the memories could somehow be that easy.

"Thus making you feel important. Thus allowing her to _manipulate_ you..." Morgan said sadly, a small crease forming between his eyebrows. "Don't get me wrong kid. I feel really, really sorry for that little girl. I think she is damaged, I think she is... I am not sure_ what_, but I remember the day you were taken, and the look on her face when she first tugged on my sleeve for help. And then, instantly, how that expression changed when she handed me the envelope. _Instantly_, Reid. From scared and innocent to..."

"To what, Morgan?" Reid snapped, lowering his voice, glancing back to the room. He knew Morgan was telling the truth. He just didn't want it to be the truth. Sponge-bob was still on. Cartoons!

"She looked...she looked _proud_, almost. And there was no innocence. It was like looking at an adult UnSub, at their eyes... the eyes don't change, Reid... like an adult UnSub wearing the mask of a little girl..."

"Morgan, I appreciate you were worried about me, that this little girl... that in your mind she probably represents something sinister when in reality she's just a victim but..."

"Reid! You didn't see her that day!"

"No...I just saw how she treated me in the van ride back, and how she acted for the 4 and a half days it took you guys to find us. That's all. Now I am going back in there now..."

His heart was racing. Dim memories of being drugged, of someone crawling around in the dank, cold dark with him. Pain. But the memories were incomplete, like dreams that turn to dust moments after awakening. Reid could almost- but not quite- access those memories.

Reid pulled the digital voice recorder out of his pocket. It was voice-activated, meaning that once he flicked it on, any talking would be recorded. It would shut off after 30 seconds or more of silence. But with the television going in the background, it probably wouldn't shut off at all...

"I'll try my best to get _something_ we can use," Reid said flatly, and went back into the child's hospital room, gently closing the door shut behind him.

* * *

"I'm glad _they're_ gone," Elle said when she had Reid alone. Reid nodded and tried to smile.

He felt totally out of his depths. Interrogating an adult UnSub was one thing, but he had little to no experience dealing with and talking to children, especially small children.

"Elle, we're still looking for... for your..." He trailed uneasily remembering the crazed, female eyes that had welled with tears. Right before he'd been shot. "Your Mom. We were wondering if you might know where she'd go."

Elle looked bored. Shrugged.

"Elle... okay this is really important, okay? Did she... did she or your Dad ever take you out anywhere else? Maybe for a vacation or..."

"No," Elle said simply. Reid nodded.

"Okay, um... remember you told me about the police man? The one_ before_ me?"

Elle nodded again, her eyes drifting back to the TV. Reid- never a huge television fan- had the sudden urge to grab the remote and turn the cartoons off, but held that urge in check.

"Okay. You said he was killed," Reid prodded.

"Yeah. After he got one of Daddy's guns. Edgar and Paula too."

Reid nodded encouragingly but Elle was only answering direct questions. He tried to remember if she'd been like this before they'd been rescued. His memory, strangely, for the entire experience was hazy and slightly off.

"So your father killed him after he found out that the police man had one of the guns?"

Elle nodded again blandly. "Yeah. Right _here_," the girl tapped between her eyes. "Except he used the shot gun so nothing was left of his face."

Reid tried to keep his expression neutral, but a coldness was spreading through him, as if someone was replacing his blood with ice water. Was Elle... was she _smiling_?

"No face left at all!" Elle repeated, as if she found the idea highly novel. "Did you know a shot gun could do that Spencer?"

Spencer Reid nodded bleakly.

"What...do you know what happened to him? After he was shot? Where your..._parents_ took him?"

Elle sucked in her lower lip, and Reid could almost see the gears turning. _God, how long ago had this taken place? She is only six now, how young was she been when this occurred..._

"They took him out of the Oubliette and out of the Dungeon. They wrapped him in a big black bag. That's all I know. But it took a long time to clean up..."

Reid froze and stared at the child. _Okay, Reid, easy does it. Don't act strange, don't act like you've just been sucker punched in the gut._

"Clean up?" Reid breathed out, almost afraid of the answer.

"Yeah, Daddy got me a pail and a scrub brush and the bleach and stuff. Said I had to clean up the floor or we'd attract vermin..."

Reid felt sick.

"What are vermin, _Spencer_?"

On impulse, Reid answered. "Most people assume they are just rodents like rats and mice that infest homes, but the term can be used to describe any small animal that spreads disease, including cockroaches, lice, bedbugs..." Reid stopped. His heart was racing.

"Oh,_ pests_. Like rats, sometimes? I once saw a rat in the oubliette, hiding in the straw. They're fast, but they squeak pretty loud when you squeeze them..." Another smile, but not a smile Spencer Reid ever wanted to see again, especially on a child.

Reid didn't just feel sick now, but also a little dizzy. He tried to focus.

"Elle, you said your Dad killed the policeman after he got one of the guns. How did the policeman _get_ the gun?"

"Daddy left the lock box open, so I took one. I took it down to the oubliette and showed it to the police man and he grabbed it from me really fast. He was really fast, but it was loaded so I didn't think he would. I wanted him to see that he had to listen to me, because he kept trying to order me around."

_Okay, Reid, breathe..._

"And...your Dad noticed it missing and came down?"

Elle shook her head sadly. "_No_. He asked me at dinner if I knew where it was. It was one of his old pistols, one of his Daddy's guns from the war..."

"And you told him?" Reid said numbly, already knowing the answer.

"I told him I'd taken it to show the policeman, to show that I was the boss, even though I was only little at the time..."

"How little Elle? Do you remember how old you were?" If a six year old was calling herself "little", she must've been pretty damn young...

"I don't know. It happened pretty soon after Mommy and Daddy took me from my first Mommy and Daddy..." Elle's voice was softer now, more contemplative. Reid nodded. Gulped noisily.

God, she _remembered._ She consciously remembered being abducted. Did she remember the murder of her biological parents, too?

"How _little_ Elle?" Reid asked again, sotto voce, concern etched all over his face. His heart was fluttering fast. He almost didn't want to know.

"I think I had just turned four. That's why I got to pick one. It was a birthday present."

The temperature of the room seemed to drop several degrees.

"_What_?" Reid gasped, even more alarmed. Elle raised her eyebrows as if to say, _whoa, man, chill out._

"Yeah. For my_ birthday_... Mommy and Daddy take new kids, because they thought I was lonely, but when I was four, they took the police man. It was a present. They wanted a kid closer to my age. They said he was too old, not even a kid at all. But I wanted the police man."

"_Why_ Elle?"

"Because children," Elle said simply, staring at Reid with eyes that were somehow empty and devoid of all emotion, except perhaps boredom, "aren't as much_ fun_ as grown-ups."

Reid felt his stomach cringe painfully.

"Elle... your birthday is in March... that was months ago. B-But...did your parents want to make me part of the family or did... was taking me _your_ idea?"

Elle smiled sweetly. It was answer enough. Reid inhaled deeply.

"Elle... why did Daddy make you clean up after the first police man was killed?" Reid asked, changing topics. He really didn't want to ask about himself right now, even though he knew he'd have to. Eventually.

"Because Daddy said I was stupid for taking the gun, that the gun was his and I could've broken it and the police man could've taken me _hostage_..."

"So... it was punishment. You having to clean up... after the police man?"

"_Yes_, because I wasn't supposed to touch the guns. Guns are _dangerous_."

Reid nodded again. _Guns are dangerous._ God.

"Elle, one last question for now, and then I'll let you get back to, to your show... _okay_?" Even if the child didn't need a break, Spencer Reid did. Desperately.

Elle shrugged, apparently indifferent. Finally bobbed her head.

"Do you happen to remember the police man's_ name_?"

Elle smiled again, and nodded fervently. "Yeah."

"Do you think... could you tell me what it is?"

"David. And he was twenty-one years old. And he was from Virginia." Another big smile.

Reid smiled back too, tightly, hoping it didn't look as fake as it felt. "Thanks Elle." He turned to leave.

"Spencer?"

"Yes?"

"Why haven't Mommy and Daddy come for me yet?" She sounded, just then, like any other six-year-old. Lonely and homesick and missing her parents. Too bad they were murdering psychos and one of them had committed suicide the day before.

"Um...Elle..." _God, how did you answer something like that?_ "I don't know, Elle. We are still trying to find your Mommy. Remember earlier, I said she was missing?"

"Oh, yeah. What about Daddy?"

"I-I am not sure. You... you just get back to your show okay?"

"Will you come back again? It gets boring in bed by yourself with nobody to talk to..."

Reid nodded solemnly. He'd return. He'd have to, whether he wanted to or not.

* * *

"Jesus, Kid, I'd ask how it went, but from the look on your _face_..." Morgan trailed.

Reid was breathing heavily. He fingered the bruise on his forehead, where Elle had smashed him with the mag-lite just a bit harder than she'd had too. Thought about what she'd just told him. He pulled the voice-recorder out of his pocket, rewound a bit. Pressed play. Could hear the child talking, could hear himself. He shut it off, scowling.

"You guys were right," Reid said blankly, and began to walk away from his colleagues, towards the bathroom. He felt sick. Like he might vomit.

"About?"

"She's... she's very disturbed." Reid said simply. He just wanted to get back to the office, let the team listen to the audio recording.

"I know why I was taken though," Reid said, stooping at a water fountain. He took several slow gulps of the water, grimacing. The water tasted like iron, like blood. And it was tepid.

"And?" Morgan asked. Reid lifted his head and wiped the dribbles of water from his mouth with the sleeve of his cardigan.

"_Elle _chose me. Like she choose the police officer that was killed. Apparently I was a belated birthday present," Reid stopped, and shook his head dismally. "Apparently grown-ups are more_ fun_ than children."

Reid finally met his friend's eyes. Morgan's eyes were concerned, full of anger but also compassion and pain. J.J. looked horrified, eyes sparkling and dewy.

"She chose you? Elle?" J.J. sputtered.

Reid nodded and sighed again. "Yeah. And if I had to guess, she probably chose Connor Stephens, too..."

"But why? Why would she...what sort of UnSubs would give a child that much power?" J.J. asked, but Reid has begun to walk again, briskly, eager to get out of the hospital.

"She is their miracle baby. Their pride and joy. Apparently the children they abduct are taken as company for Elle," Reid said, licking his lips nervously. "Hotch and Rossi were right about them wanting a nuclear family."

"But the murdered children... if Elle is making decisions, at least on her birthday, about who is taken... that would explain the mixed victimology, the holes in our profile..." Morgan said quietly.

They were at the elevator. Reid began to hammer the button repeatedly. He wanted to get out of this building.

"It might also explain why the children were found tortured and murdered... Elle didn't _like_ them." Reid said darkly as they stepped onto the elevator.

"They weren't _fun _enough for her," Morgan finished, throwing a glance over at Reid, who was half-hugging himself. Reid met Derek Morgan's eyes and his head twitched just a little.

"They _aren't _collectors. That part of the profile is wrong,_ too_," Reid finished.

The elevator was slowly descending. It had seemed to move slowly on the way up to Elle's room, but now it was moving at a crawl, making strange squealing noises that raised the hair on the back of Spencer Reid's neck. Not that he'd ever particularly liked elevators, anyway.

"Reid, from the beginning we were looking at this case as if Edward White was the planner of these kidnappings, although subservient in the sense that he was terrified of his wife's psychosis, and that Dolores was the instigator, the UnSub who decided which children lived and died... that Dolores was dissatisfied with certain children. That they didn't meet her _standards_..."

"I know."

"But from what you've just told us... it's not Dolores, but _Elle_, who incited Edward White to kill these kids."

"I _know_, Morgan." Reid said tiredly.

"Which... you realize that makes that little girl...you realize that puts Elle in the same camp as any other UnSub we deal with? Even though she's a young child?"

"Morgan, just _stop_, okay?"

Morgan nodded and stopped speaking. There was a high-pitched ding as they reached ground level and the doors creaked opened. Reid tumbled out, walking quickly, eager to get outside and breathe fresh air.

* * *

**End of chapter 6 note:** For those of you that didn't like Elle being the youngest or the protected one, well... you should have had faith. I like to whump Reid. Also, I thought the idea of having such a young child helping in the selection process was both eerie as hell, but also true to life (children are capable as just as much violence as adults, even though we like to think of them as innocent and "pure"). A child with an attachment disorder, raised by UnSubs like those depicted in this story would be even more likely to commit violence, but many children who don't have attachment disorders can be quite violent and cruel ("Lord of the Flies" is quite realistic in that respect, as is the psychology behind the child soldier mind-set...) For those that are interested in learning more about violent, even deadly children, I recommend watching the movie "Child of Rage" based on the true-life story of Beth Thomas (there are actual interviews with her as a child on youtube, as well as the 1992 TV movie)

Again, please review if you liked this. I like getting feedback. If you didn't like this, also, please review and tell me how I could've improved (within reason).- Lexikal


	7. Chapter 7: RAD kid

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Seven)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None.

**Warnings:** Dark themes; violence; missing children/implied child abuse, lots of Reid angst...

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish (2008-ish), is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.

**Chapter Note:** The team discusses the conversation Reid had with Elle in the hospital. This chapter will be short, as I am pretty tired today. I don't have a beta, so please excuse any typos or mistakes. I'll try to edit for obvious errors, but if any slip by, please ignore. Oh, and **review please**!

I write in this Chapter that Elle's birthday is in March. I think I wrote it_ SOMEWHERE_ in this story as being in March, but now I can't find that reference, all I know is that it's currently July in this story and Reid was a belated "birthday present". If someone finds where I mention Elle's month of birth, please pm me with the chapter and where it is... thanks! (In the future I will write basic character info like abduction dates, addresses, D.O.B.'s etc of my own characters in another file for easy reference... _you live, you learn I guess...)_

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The team was sitting around the conference table, listening to the audio recording of Reid's interview with Elle. Reid drummed his fingers on the table surface nervously, occasionally glancing at his colleagues' faces.

"This kid sounds like a child with severe Reactive Attachment Disorder," Rossi said when the audio finally shut off.

Reid nodded. He already knew that, and hearing the interview again, away from Elle... it was easier to hear what she was _really_ saying. She was also creepier, too, harder to see as a purely innocent, albeit traumatized, little victim.

"Well...now we know why _you_ were taken," Hotch said, frowning. "Elle wanted you. Why she wanted an adult is still up for speculation, but I'd venture that we should take her at her word. Adults are more_ fun_ than children for her. Adults offer more of a challenge for her to torment, apparently."

"She didn't torment me, though," Reid said quickly, glancing over at Hotch. Hotch stared at Reid, not giving an inch.

"You said she hit you in the head with a mag-lite hard enough to give you that bruise? And she harshly prodded you in the ribs with the same flashlight? And at other times... you were unconscious, but whenever you awoke she was down there with you, watching you?"

"Her fath..._Edward White_... made her hit me in the van, and as for prodding me in the ribs, I told you, her younger...a younger girl was convinced I was dead. She wanted to prove I wasn't dead."

"Reid, you're not protecting this child by denying what happened," Hotch said sternly.

"Okay, so she wanted me. I was a _birthday present_," Reid admitted, feeling a chill run through him. "She also said she chose the police man for her fourth birthday. So it's not just adults she wants, but men in the law enforcement field. That has to be significant."

"Men are typically considered to be both mentally and physically stronger than women," Rossi said, knowing that Reid already knew this but also knowing that Reid wasn't really in a talkative mood. "And law enforcement officers are considered to be even stronger than the average adult male. If this girl could've selected a Navy SEAL as a "present", she probably would've. By selecting what she views as the toughest challenges, she feels a sense of power when her selected victim has to obey her... a_ little girl_."

Garcia was already running the information Elle had provided about the police officer, a 21-year-old Cop from Virginia named David who had, in all likelihood, disappeared sometime between February and July of 2006.

"Of course, there is the obvious problem with her fifth... _birthday present_. Is Garcia checking for any missing police officers from Virginia from that same time period in 2007?" Reid muttered.

"Yes, but it's also possible that Connor Stephens was selected by Elle for her fifth birthday," Rossi said. "Even though Connor was taken close to 7 months ago now, he might have been a belated birthday gift... like you were, Reid. Her birthday is in March, and you were taken in July."

Reid shook his head. "No... I _saw _Connor. He was the eldest of the children, and looked older than his fifteen years, but Elle ignored him, from what I can remember. She has a preference; male law-enforcement officers in their 20's, apparently. And she _admitted_ to selecting the police officer. She said nothing about asking for or requesting Connor to be abducted."

"Yet, Connor hasn't been killed like the others..." Hotch trailed, inviting the rest of the team to speculate.

"Because he serves a _purpose_. He is old enough and strong enough to help with the kidnappings, but still young and innocent enough to put most potential victims at ease. He is a _decoy._ No less, no more." Reid said flatly.

"And now that is Elle is in custody, Dolores White has no reason to keep him around anymore..." Prentiss said uneasily.

"Unless she wants to abduct another child. One to _replace_ Elle. In which case..." Hotch's voice was eerily flat. "J.J., how fast can you get a press conference assembled?"

"Less than half an hour," J.J. responded immediately.

"Okay, we're going to want to flash Dolores White's face all over the news, as well as Connor Stephen's and the remaining children, including the little girl Reid described to us..."

"_Julie_," Reid muttered softly.

"We need all the kids' faces on the news, but especially White's and Connor Stephen's. If another child is abducted to replace Elle, they won't waste time, so the public needs to know what to watch for. All female children resembling Elle in the four to eight year old age bracket..."

"Got it," J.J. said, standing quickly to go and prepare her press release statements.

"The rest of you, I want you to interview the parents of the currently missing kids. If they're local, drive there, in the case of Connor it's more efficient to phone..."

The team got up to leave.

"Reid, I want _you_ to stay here."

"_What_?" Reid snapped, narrowing his eyes.

"I want you to think._ Remember_. Listen and re-listen to that interview, and write down anything you remember this girl saying at any time to you, no matter how insignificant it seemed to you at the time... from the moment you first heard her voice to the last time you spoke to her..."

"_Hotch_..."

"Reid, right now Elle is our best lead, and while the rest of us can- _and will_- develop a more extensive profile of her based on what we know, _you still know more_."

"You want me to profile a child victim as if she were an UnSub. As if she committed these abductions and murders. This isn't about victimology, we know now _why_ she was taken..."

"She's not an UnSub yet, Reid," Hotch said slowly, driving his point home. "But she was instrumental in the selection process of both you and, according to her own testimony, at least one other person; a young man who is now dead, and who would still be alive if not for her actions."

"Hotch!"

"All I am asking is that you think, Reid. Remember. Write down anything. Profile this kid. You know her the best; she's a chameleon, but you've seen her change, behaviourally, more often than the rest of us."

Reid finally nodded, knowing Hotch was right. He waited until Hotch left the room before leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes. Ran through what he remembered the child saying earlier at the hospital. Shivered.

"_I think I had just turned four. That's why I got to pick one. It was a birthday present."_

_The temperature of the room seemed to drop several degrees._

"_What?" Reid gasped, even more alarmed. Elle raised her eyebrows as if to say, whoa, man, chill out._

"_Yeah. For my birthday... Mommy and Daddy take new kids, because they thought I was lonely, but when I was four, they took the police man. It was a present. They wanted a kid closer to my age. They said he was too old, not even a kid at all. But I wanted the police man."_

"_Why Elle?"_

"_Because children," Elle said simply, staring at Reid with eyes that were somehow empty and devoid of all emotion, except perhaps boredom, "aren't as much fun as grown-ups."_

Reid shivered again, and slipped out of his chair. This was going to require a lot of black coffee...

* * *

Yes, I know, it's a short chapter. Tired. **Review?**


	8. Chapter 8: Hypnosis

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Eight)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None.

**Warnings:** Dark themes; violence; missing children/implied child abuse, lots of Reid angst...

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish (2008-ish), is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.

**Chapter Note:** Reid begins to remember some strange events during the time he was kidnapped while under hypnosis. Reid angst ahead! You have been warned.

**Fan Fic Music Video Note:** I recently made a music video for this fic set to the song "Last Resort" by Papa Roach. If you are interested in watching this, go to YouTube and type in "lexikalfanfic", in quotations. A few videos should pop up (all fan fiction music videos). Select the one entitled _"This is my last Resort" Criminal Minds Fan Fiction Music Video, _and enjoy... or you can get the URL directly from my author's profile page. Take care, and happy reading! And, like always, **please review!**

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"This is _all_?" Hotch asked. He'd read over Reid's horrible handwriting in a matter of minutes. "Reid, what you recall here... this might account for 2 or 3 hours of your abduction, at the most." Hotch said sternly.

Spencer Reid shrugged. "That's all I _remember_."

"And you don't remember being drugged or injected or knocked unconscious?" Hotch prodded. "Other than initially, in the park, when you felt that sharp sting in your thigh?"

Reid shook his head no.

"And obviously you weren't sleeping."

"I don't _think_ so..." Reid trailed, and Hotch's eyebrows knitted together. Hotch picked up the phone and began to dial a number. Reid stood and Hotch motioned for him to stay seated. Aaron Hotchner said a name and Spencer Reid felt his blood drop a few degrees. Hotch was speaking to the Bureau's head shrink.

"You have an appointment at 1:00..." Hotch said when he hung up the phone.

"Hotch..." Reid whined.

"This is non-negotiable."

"Hotch, if my mind thinks whatever happened to me should be repressed, it's probably wise to let it do its thing and not go stirring up..."

"Ordinarily I'd agree with you," Hotch said, not unkindly. "But your memories are pretty much the only lead we have to go on right now. The profile has fallen apart..."

"You know, it's impossible to hypnotize someone who is resisting," Reid warned his boss.

"Reid, we _need_ access to those memories. We need to know, because we need to find this woman, and these kids. We need to know what happened to you, what that you find so... _appalling_ that you _can't _consciously recall it."

"Maybe _nothing_ happened. Maybe the initial drug..."

"You were given a tox screen, so whatever you were injected with was metabolized and out of your system rapidly, or is a drug that isn't commonly tested for."

"I could go back and speak to Elle. She's six years old, and she has been with these people for years. She could tell us even more..."

"Elle, from the sounds of it, is playing games with you and right now we don't have time to be led on a wild goose chase by a manipulative child, victim or not."

Reid opened his mouth as if to say something, and then snapped it shut, angrily.

"Why don't we have the BAU's child psychiatrist talk to Elle? I'm not good with kids at the best of times, and..."

"We'll do that, too, but honestly, I value your memories and the veracity of your memories over the word of that child. We _all _heard that tape, Reid. Nobody blames her for being the way she is..."

"And how_ is_ she, Hotch?" Reid challenged, his eyes narrowing. "I found the kid bobbing unconsciously in freezing ice water for trying to get _me_ water. Of course she displays classic-"

"Symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder?" Hotch cut Reid off. Reid nodded.

"Like I said, nobody blames this child, but we don't have time for head games right now."

"Memories obtained during hypnosis don't hold up in court, and for good reason. The hypnotized patient is highly suggestible and susceptible to confabulation..."

"Reid, right now we just want to find these kids. Let the lawyers deal with the prosecution of Dolores White after this is all over..."

"And what about _Elle_?" Reid said miserably.

"What _about_ her?" Hotch asked, his tone almost infuriatingly blasé.

"What if it comes out that she had more to do with these UnSubs activities than simply asking for certain victims..._ nobody_ is going to want to foster, let alone adopt, a child like that and..."

"Reid, your job isn't to be this child's protector or friend or Guardian Ad Litem, it's to be an FBI agent with this bureau and help catch..."

Reid shook his head angrily and made sure to slam the door as loud as he could on the way out of the SAC's office.

* * *

Hotch escorted Reid down to the BAU's chief psychiatrist's office at quarter to one. It had almost been four days since Reid had been found, and every second was precious. So far no child matching the description of any of the children thought to be under the control of Dolores White had turned up, thank god, but that didn't mean one wouldn't _soon_...

The BAU's head shrink was a balding man in his 50s with kind eyes who specialized in treating traumatized field agents. Reid had seen him once or twice for assessments, but never for counselling, always dodging that particular bullet by using his intelligence to get out of what would have been, for any other agent, mandatory therapy.

"Agent Reid," the shrink said kindly, holding out his hand for a handshake. Reid shook the man's hand and sighed, obviously uncomfortable.

"Agent Hotchner tells me you don't want to be here, so I'll hurry this up and make it as pain-free as possible, okay?"

Reid shrugged. Hotch sat opposite the shrink, Douglas Charles, and Reid took the couch. He knew the hypnosis drill.

Hotch pulled his own tape recorder out of his pocket, even though a video camera had already been set up in the room and was ready to go.

"We're going to tape this session, if that's alright with you," Charles told Reid. Reid shrugged again. He didn't have much of a choice. Charles stood up and went over to the video camera and turned it on, checking to make sure it was focused on Reid and Reid's face. Reid wanted to say that he felt somewhat like an UnSub being interviewed, but he kept that thought to himself.

Charles came back over to Reid and began the induction, watching as the young man's eyes began to flicker and grow heavy before finally shutting altogether.

"Agent Reid?" Charles asked gently and soothingly, the voice of a good hypnotherapist, low, dulcet tones. Metrical.

"Yeah?" Reid slurred.

"We're going to go back in time to the day you and Agent Hotchner, Agent Prentiss and Agent Morgan were handing out flyers of a potential UnSub in the park. Do you remember that day?"

"_Yeah_..."

"How many days ago was that?"

"About...approximately eight days ago now. Eight days, almost. At around 3:15 pm today that will be when I was taken. Two hours or so from now. _Approximately_."

"_Okay_. And something happened that day. You were separated from your team. Do you remember how that happened?"

"I...I stopped for water..." Reid said tonelessly. "I stopped at the water fountain."

"You stopped at a water fountain?" Charles repeated.

"Yeah. My team walked around the corner, and then I felt a sharp pain in my thigh. I thought at first I had been stung by a bee or a wasp. But then... I got dizzy. I fell. There was a man's face over mine, Edward White's face. Hotch told me after I was found that Edward White shot himself in the dungeon at his home..."

"So you were drugged by one of the UnSubs," Charles said. Reid nodded.

"What happened_ then_?"

"I...I...White managed to convince some passerby that I was his friend, that I was sick. Diabetic or something, I think that's what he said. And the man helped White walk me to the van that was waiting and they put me inside. And we drove off."

"Do you remember anything as you were driving? Were you conscious?"

"I was dizzy. Everything was spinning. The missing boy, Connor Stephens, was in the passenger seat for most of the ride. Elle was in the back with me. At one point I tugged on my handcuffs and they cut into my wrists. White asked Elle if I was fighting the restraints, something like... hard to_ remember_... and she hit me in the head with a mag-lite."

"Why did she hit you, Agent Reid?"

"_Punishment_," Reid said simply.

Charles asked Reid questions for a while, and most of his responses were what Reid had already recorded and given to Hotch to read.

"When you finally got to the house, were you conscious?" Charles asked gently.

"Mmm..._yeah_. I had vomited in the car. So Elle had hit me again. In the _stomach_." Reid's face screwed up in pain as he relived the blow. The shrink threw a glance over at Hotch. Hotch's eyes were burning with anger. He hadn't heard this before.

"The little girl, _Elle_... the _six year old_? _She_ hit you again?"

"_Yeah_."

"Was she told to, like the first time?"

Reid gently rocked his head from side to side, and then his eyes fluttered open, unaware of his current surroundings, trapped in some other time.

"I- I have a _concussion_." Reid said miserably. "I can't stop throwing up. She hits me around the legs. It doesn't really hurt, because she is so young, but it stings. Edward White is laughing. Telling her she is doing a good job, and tells me to stop disobeying my sister. But then I vomit again, and my mouth is full of blood, so maybe I was also hit in the mouth. I am still in the van and it gets on the... the blood and puke...gets all over, and White comes over and punches me in the head. In the temple. And everything goes black for a little while."

Reid's face had turned an alarming shade of white. His forehead was perspiring. "I don't feel well, but then everything goes black, and when I wake up, I am tied up. I am naked, except for my boxer shorts. Elle is there. She tells me I am on TV, that she was too, she tells me I'll get out faster, if I am good..."

"Out of where?" Charles asked calmly. "And remember, Agent Reid, you can remember all of these things, remember all the details, but you are just observing. You are not afraid. Your breathing is slow and even and you feel calm, but you're just watching all of this. Telling me all of this. Okay?"

"Okay," Reid said and exhaled sharply. A bit of colour began to return to his cheeks.

"It's hard to follow what she is saying, Elle. She doesn't make any sense. She has a doll with her- one of the doll's eyes is missing and the hair looks like it has been deliberately cut off with scissors. Elle tells me that if I lie to her, I will be punished, but she doesn't tell me what she means by this. I try to talk to her, ask her about Edward and Dolores White, her real parents. She said her real parents didn't want her... and that if I lie, I will be punished, and she leaves then. And later, she comes back..."

"How much later, Agent Reid?"

"I don't know. She brings a _knife_." Reid's voice was flat, detached, but beginning to hitch again and the shrink had to remind him that he was calm and a simple observer.

"She tells me that she could cut my throat open like a pig. Like the boy in the corner."

"Did she cut the boy's throat in the corner?" Charles asked calmly.

"I-I...I don't _know_. I...his throat was cut she says. And she says she can cut mine, too. But... I don't know if _she_ cut_ his_ throat..."

Hotch ground his teeth until he was certain the enamel would come off. He hadn't heard this part either.

"Did she threaten you in any other way?"

"She... she says with me tied up, she could cut one of my eyes out, and maybe I look scared because she says she can cut both of them out, and then I will be blind. I will _walk in blackness_, she says. That it doesn't matter if I am a grown-up and she is a child, because I am tied up and she is_ free_...and how would I like to be in the dark _forever and ever_..." Reid licked his lips. "I don't feel _well_. I feel like I am going to _puke_."

"You're calm Agent Reid, you're _calm_. I want you to take deep breaths and think of something peaceful for a moment," Charles said, but Reid, even hypnotized, was rocking slightly, sitting up and rocking, his arms laced around his stomach in a self-hug. After about thirty seconds of rocking Reid stopped and leaned back, taking deep, gaspy breaths.

Hotch watched his agent, growing more and more concerned. What he was hearing was horrific, of course, but Reid had been through worse before. Reid had suffered _much_ more at the hands of Tobias Hankel, for instance, and hadn't repressed those memories. Not like this. There_ had_ to be more that Reid hadn't divulged yet...

"Agent Reid, this all must have been quite terrifying for you," Charles said earnestly, leaning forward, watching the hypnotized agent. Reid kept licking his lips nervously. Hypnotized, he nodded.

"Yeah..."

"But you were kidnapped_ before_. And you have been in very frightening situations before, haven't you?"

Reid licked his lips again. Nodded.

"But this situation, this time... you were more frightened than those other times, weren't you?"

"_Yes_..." Reid whined, and shut his eyes. His face was screwed up tight.

"_Why_, agent Reid? Why was_ this_ time so much more _frightening_..."

"Don't wanna _say_..." Reid stammered, his voice sounding almost drunk with fear.

"Is it because Elle is so young? That you didn't _expect_ a child..."

"_No_," Reid said, shaking his head fervently. "It's cold in _here_."

"_Where_?"

"My insides are falling _out_!" Spencer Reid's voice was a sudden, panicked scream. Both Hotch and Charles sat up, as if shocked. Hotch glanced over at the psychiatrist, his eyebrows rising in a _"what the hell is going on here"_ expression.

"I don't know what's _real_!" Reid barked out with a cry before either man could respond to his initial outburst and stood up, began to pace. Still hypnotized. "No... _this _can't be real. It has to be a trick or...it has to be a trick. A _trick_."

"_What's_ a trick?" Charles said as calmly as he could.

"I...I am losing my mind." Reid said loudly. "Nothing makes _sense_. The skeleton in the corner is _laughing at me_... but I am not dreaming. I _know_ I am_ not_ dreaming."

"The _skeleton_ is laughing at you?"

"It... it is laughing at me. My brain is no longer working. I... my brain has been_ broken_." Reid had turned translucent.

"Agent Reid, remember, you are just seeing these things now, you are an _observer_. At any time..."

Reid jolted up suddenly, no longer hypnotized. He stared around, as if horrified. Gasped. Gasped again. Then he was up and out of the room, running. Sprinting. Hotch trailed him down the hall. Reid burst into the men's room and barely made it to the sink before vomiting all over the place, all down the front of his sweater vest, the retching mixing with low, gasping moans. Tears.

Hotch watched the younger man for a moment, shocked. Shocked by what he had heard. Shocked by the frenzied display of emotion he was now seeing. It made no sense, but it did suggest that Reid had been drugged with something. Repeatedly, given the huge lapses in his memory. He'd ask Garcia later what drugs could produce such effects. LSD? Rohypnol? Some combination of the two?

It was possible. But _why_?

Reid was shaking violently, still leaning over the sink, the water running on cold. Hotch approached his agent slowly, wary of spooking him, and handed Reid a paper towel. Reid grabbed it and stood over the sink, still shaking.

"I want to go _home_, Hotch. I don't want to do this job anymore! I want to go_ home_..."

"Reid, calm _down_..."

"I have to get out of here!" Reid said in a rush, and bolted out of the room.

"_REID_!" Hotch called, knowing better than to actually try and chase the man right now. Chasing him would only increase his panic.

Hotch sighed and pulled out his cell phone. Reid would have to go back to the bullpen to retrieve his bag and his keys.

"Morgan? Yeah, it's me. Yeah. No. He is panicking. Not sure yet. Yeah, when he gets there, keep him there. Don't let him leave. No. No matter what he says, stall him till I get there. Yeah. Okay. Thanks."

Hotch shut this phone and jogged in the direction of the bullpen. What the hell had happened in that house?

* * *

That's it for chapter 8, **please review**. I realize it's pretty short, but I am tired and I figured shorter, but more frequent chapters are ultimately more rewarding than longer chapters you have to wait forever to read. - Lexikal


	9. Chapter 9: Big Brother

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Nine)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None.

**Warnings:** Dark themes; violence; missing children/implied child abuse, lots of Reid angst...

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish (2008-ish), is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.

**Chapter Note:** Reid has a mild meltdown as he continues to "remember" what happened in the White house. Reid angst ahead! You have been warned.

**Fan Fic Music Video Note:** I recently made a music video for this fic set to the song "Last Resort" by Papa Roach. If you are interested in watching this, go to YouTube and type in "lexikalfanfic", in quotations. A few videos should pop up (all fan fiction music videos). Select the one entitled _"This is my last Resort" Criminal Minds Fan Fiction Music Video, _and enjoy... or you can get the URL directly from my author's profile page. Take care, and happy reading! And, like always, **please review!**

**

* * *

**

"Reid, come on, _sit down_."

Those were the first words Hotch heard as he entered the bullpen. Morgan had his hands out and up and was speaking to his friend in a slow, calming voice. Nervous tension was radiating off Spencer Reid like an electrical force field.

"Reid, come on kid, just sit for a_ minute_. You know you're not going home like that. At least get _changed_."

"I-I am just getting my go-bag and I am going to go home and..."

"Reid, can I talk to you for a moment?" Hotch said gently as he passed by. Reid looked up with haunted, frightened eyes.

"I want to go home, now, Hotch!" Almost a wail.

"C'mon, it will only take a moment."

"Then can I go _home_?"

"Let's just go talk first."

Reid nodded dully and staggered along behind Hotch. Hotch shot Morgan a look: _Thank you._ Morgan nodded back, obviously worried.

Reid was still pale and looked ready to throw up again, maybe, or faint. Hotch pulled a chair out for him and Reid, unsteadily, sat down.

"You could have been drugged. That would explain the amnesia, and also what you _remembered_," Hotch said in his best paternal tone of voice.

"Why? Why _drug_ me?"

"Because you were an adult, and therefore harder to control? Or possibly because Elle may have thought it would be funny to watch?" Hotch said glumly. He tapped a finger on the spiral notebook in which Reid had, earlier that day, detailed the account of his kidnapping and treatment.

"Drug me with what? You heard _me_! With..."

"LSD, perhaps, or some designer hallucinogen. LSD can be quite effective, from what I have been told, even in minute doses and depending on the dosage it wouldn't have registered on a tox screen..."

Reid was hugging himself.

"It was more than being drugged, though, seeing weird things. I knew... _I can remember now_... that I knew when I saw that boy, that _skeleton_, begin to laugh that it was_ wrong_. That I was hallucinating. But other things... I can_ remember_ them happening, but they _couldn't_ have happened..."

Reid's voice trailed off. If Reid didn't look ready to bolt or burst into tears Hotch would've asked him to go get changed and maybe burn that sweater vest, but as it stood, getting this information was more important.

"What other things, Reid?" Hotch asked carefully. Reid shrugged.

"_Spencer_?"

"You said you were going to send a psychiatrist to interview Elle? _Did you_?" Reid said, changing the topic.

"One should be returning back from the hospital any minute now, depending on how long the interview lasted. The man promised he'd phone with his initial first impressions before typing up the report." Hotch sighed, and made a mental note to ask Reid about the _other_ memories later.

Reid was silent as he thought this over.

"Do you still want to go home right now, or would you rather wait for that phone call?" Hotch asked.

"I guess... I want to know what she said, what Elle said. What the psychiatrist thinks."

"_Okay_. Why don't you go get changed. You have your go-bag here, right?"

Reid nodded. Hotch nodded back, excusing him. When Reid was gone, Aaron Hotchner went over to his window and opened it, frowning slightly at the smell.

* * *

"Agent Hotchner?" the shrink said. It was a psychiatrist Reid didn't recognize, not by name or voice, but according to Hotch, a good one.

"_Speaking_. I am going to have you on speaker phone. S.S.A. Dr. Reid is here with me, too, as well as agents Morgan and-"

"That's fine, S.A.C. Hotchner," the man said quickly. "I will still type up a full report, but I promised you that I'd phone with my initial thoughts?"

"_Yes_."

"This child displays all the classic symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder, specifically RAD, the inhibited subtype of the disorder, and not Disinhibited Attachment Disorder or..."

"_DAD._ Yeah." Reid broke in impatiently.

"She does, however, still present with some classic symptoms that straddle both main subtypes; refusal to make eye contact; lying that was unrelated to the case and seemed unrelated to fear, but borne out of a sole desire to control and manipulate the interview. Most disturbingly, this child, though obviously bored with me, asked several times about Agent Reid and..."

Reid stiffened slightly.

"...inquired into his health and well-being, before launching into a long monologue about gore and violence, also classic indicators of the disorder. Specifically she asked why Agent Reid hadn't visited her again, and if, and I am quoting here, _he was still her big brother_."

"What did you tell her?" Hotch said calmly, watching Reid carefully out of the corner of his eye. Reid was pacing a bit, obviously distressed.

"I told her that Agent Reid had_ never_ been her brother, and that the people she referred to as her parents were actually kidnappers who had kidnapped her from her real Mommy and Daddy."

"How did she respond to _that_?" Hotch asked.

"_Not well_. She told me that I was a kidnapper and that if I didn't reunite her with her_ mother_, there would be more deaths."

A collective chill seemed to run through the room. Morgan glanced over at Reid. Reid stalked around a bit more, as if unable to remain still. Prentiss and J.J. looked at each other, the shock evident on their faces. Even seasoned BAU agents, apparently, felt shock and fear at the idea of an angelic 6-year-old girl threatening murder.

"She threatened death if she didn't get what she _wanted_?" Hotch said flatly, eyes searching out Reid's. Reid looked hollow and dazed and utterly exhausted- both physically and mentally.

"Not _specifically_, but there was definitely that _feel_ to it. She told me there would be more deaths unless she was reunited with Dolores White, but didn't threaten actual violence, herself. The facial expressions and tone of voice, though... all of it... suggested to me that this child, though probably never involved in an actual murder directly, has overseen some killings and at the very least witnessed some deaths. The concept of killing wasn't new to her, and it wasn't distressing to her the way you'd assume it'd be for a normal six-year-old child, even a highly traumatized six-year-old."

"I realize you're busy," Hotch said diplomatically, "But we're trying to form a profile based on the movements of the female UnSub, Dolores White, and right now Elle is our only real lead. Was there anything else she said that could possibly help, that stood out as _unusual_... given the circumstances, I mean?"

"_Honestly_, Agent Hotchner, the entire interview with this child was a little _unnerving_, and I did my practicum on prepubescent children who had committed homicide, usually matricide or patricide, but in all cases they had _killed_..." the man was silent for a moment, thinking, choosing his words carefully.

"She asked if Agent Reid- whom she referred to as _Spencer_- was still having _waking nightmares_. I thought it was a weird thing to say, so I called her on it, and she clammed up but smiled at me; a long, slow smile and..."

Reid's pacing had increased.

"Did she say what that referred_ to_?" Reid blurted out anxiously.

"No. I brought it up a few times later, hoping to catch her off guard, but every time she caught me out. _Why?_ Do you have any idea what she was referring to, because based on the facial expression, I was actually worried."

"We think Agent Reid may have been drugged with some sort of hallucinogen during his abduction," Hotch said tiredly, before Reid could deny anything.

"That... that might explain what she said. Like I said, she wouldn't give me much. Everything she said had a teasing quality to it; just enough information to pique my interest, but nothing truly helpful. Even after I explained to her that her_ Mommy_, Dolores White, had taken the other children..."

"Wait a second," Hotch cut in, voice sharp. "Did she ask about the UnSub, _Edward White_?"

"Yes. I explained that he had died, and asked her if she understood that death was _permanent_ and..."

"The hospital... _Elle didn't know he was dead_." Reid snapped in the direction of the phone. Edward White had been their one card to play.

"They, They... they _said she knew_. Said she'd told them she'd seen the body herself when she was removed by the paramedics, so I just assumed..." the psychiatrist trailed. "They were certain this child knew he'd killed himself. She described the body to the nurses, and I checked over the files before the interview. Everything fit."

"She knew he was dead?" Reid asked, his voice rising with anxiety. "Are you_ sure_?"

"Yes, she even knew that he'd shot himself in the head. I asked her how she felt about it and she said it served him right for putting her in the bathtub, but then wouldn't elaborate on _what that meant_..."

Reid was nodding. This didn't make sense. Elle had been shot in the stomach, only a few seconds after he'd been shot in the shoulder. How could she have possibly have known that _Daddy_ had shot himself in the head? Had she woken up before him and heard the gunshot and put the pieces together? She'd been unconscious and without a heartbeat when the paramedics had taken her out of the oubliette so she couldn't have seen the corpse _then_...

Once again, the puzzle pieces weren't fitting.

* * *

After Hotch disconnected, Reid stood up.

"I... I think I want to go home now."

"I think we are ready to formulate an updated profile in the conference room," Hotch told Reid. Reid shook his head.

"Can you guys do it? I don't think I am going to be much help today. I just... I just _really_ want to go home."

"_Reid_..."

"Hotch, you implied earlier that if I listened to the call, I could leave early today. I just, I need some time to absorb all of this, okay?"

Hotch sighed tiredly and nodded. Morgan, however, followed Reid out into the bullpen, towards his desk.

"Morgan, I want to go home and get a shower and scrub my skin off and go to sleep._ Please_. Don't start with me." Reid was aware that Prentiss and even J.J. were watching him concernedly. Damn it.

"Reid, she's had these kids for a little over 4 days now. If she has any credit cards they are listed under another name. Basically, they have all just dropped off the map and that..."

"_What am I supposed to do about it_?" Reid asked angrily, turning on his friend. "The last time I tried to make a dent in this case, I got myself abducted and became this case's biggest _liability_. You guys will be able to formulate a better profile if I am not here to mess it up with emotional outbursts and LSD-induced _memories_. So, unless you..."

"Kid, we still _need_ you on this case."

"If she didn't kill them in the first 24 hours, she's unlikely to kill one between now and 10 a.m. tomorrow. I am going home to sleep."

"I'm phoning you later," Morgan said, and Reid raised a hand in acknowledgment but continued on his way to the elevator.

* * *

Elle lay in her hospital bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about _Spencer_. She could remember him tied to the wall in the oubliette, head craning to look at the skeleton, mouth opening and closing as he screamed in abject horror. She hadn't known what he'd been seeing, but it had been _soooo_ funny to watch him freak out like that.

"What's the matter, _big brother_?" She'd asked him with mock concern, getting up and leaving her doll in the straw.

"Make him...make him stop. _Make him stop_!" Spencer Reid, a 27-year-old _man_, had been begging _her_ for mercy.

"Make him stop _what_?" Elle asked smugly, and walked over to the skeleton in the corner, the obvious source of Spencer's terror. For _now_, anyway. She knelt down and crawled behind it, making the arms and head move like a puppet.

"_Whooooo_!"

"It's laughing!" Spencer had screamed, obviously terrified. "It's laughing at me! This _can't_ be happening! _This can't happen!_ This is _not_ reality!"

Elle had let the skeleton's arms drop then. She walked back over to Spencer and prodded him in the stomach with her shoe, watching with slightly shiny eyes as he squirmed away from her, backwards. He couldn't really get away from her though, not tied to the wall like that.

"Why _can't _it happen?"

"Skeletons don't _laugh_," Spencer had ground out desperately, "It's _not_ possible!"

"You just keep telling yourself that, _big brother_. Before your friends find you, _if_ they ever find you, you're going to see a whole lot of things you _never_ thought _possible_."

Spencer had thrown up then, all down the front of his naked chest. Elle had wrinkled her nose, and felt like punching him, but she didn't want his vomit on her boots or flashlight or hands.

"You... you're not a normal little girl," Reid had said weakly, head drooping against his vomit covered chest. He was breathing quickly, face pale from fear and sickness. "You're not right. _You're a psychopath. They damaged you and you're not a normal child anymore."_

"'Course I am a normal little girl... and you better be nice to me, or you won't_ last_ long. _Believe_ me..."

"What are you talking about? The other kids? The _dead_ ones... we found them. Your parents killed them, but you _told_ them to, didn't you?"

Elle had smiled smugly and shrugged. "They were _boring_."

Reid craned his head then and screamed a swear word at the skeleton in the corner. _Told it to shut the eff up._

Elle had laughed harder. Spencer Reid was proving to be even funnier than the first cop. A whole lot funnier, actually, and his facial expressions were hilarious. When Spencer was scared, he showed it on his face. Watching his terror was almost delicious.

Elle snapped back out of her reverie and stared around the hospital room, before reaching over and pressing the button for the nurse. She was still on an IV for fluids and antibiotics, but that was supposed to come out soon.

"Yes, honey?" a nurse asked, entering her room.

"Is _Spencer_ coming to visit me today?"

"I...I don't think so, honey. I can check. In the meantime, is there anything else I can help you with?"

"Yeah..." Elle said slowly, pouting a bit in obvious disappointment. "When is dinner?"

* * *

Yeah, short, but short is good (for me, anyway). Then I can at least update a chapter from some fic I am working on each day I have access to a computer. **Please review!** Lexikal


	10. Chapter 10: Scalded

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Ten)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None.

**Warnings:** Dark themes; violence; missing children/implied child abuse, lots of Reid angst...

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish (2008-ish), is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.

**Fan Fic Music Video Note:** I recently made a music video for this fic set to the song "Last Resort" by Papa Roach. If you are interested in watching this, go to YouTube and type in "lexikalfanfic", in quotations. A few videos should pop up (all fan fiction music videos so far). Select the one entitled _"This is my last Resort" Criminal Minds Fan Fiction Music Video, _and enjoy... or you can get the URL directly from my author's profile page. Take care, and happy reading! And, like always, **please review!**

**

* * *

**

Reid dumped his bag near the door, kicked his shoes off and made his way to the bathroom. He pulled a bottle of aspirin from his medicine cabinet and crunched two tablets in his mouth, relishing the acrid taste. He put the stopper in the tub, turned on the water and watched the bath fill- standing up for a complete shower seemed exhausting- but the water was hot. Too hot. He watched the water steam, the steam curl and fog the mirror.

He blinked and the phone was ringing, the water sloshing over the edges of the tub. What the hell? It had been less than half an inch full... just a_ second_ ago. Reid turned the water off and stared into the tub. His bathroom floor was covered in water. Reid plunged a hand into the water and snatched it back with a scalded scream, staring at his red hand.

He was shaking as he made his way to the living room and picked up the phone.

"Hey Kid, I told you I'd phone," Morgan said by way of introduction.

"Yeah," Reid said tonelessly.

"Reid? You okay, man?"

"I just... I slightly flooded my bathroom." Reid said in the same dull, emotionless voice.

"Flooded your bathroom... _how_?"

"I was filling the tub, and the next thing I knew... the water was running over the sides and the phone was ringing. I have to go clean it up before it leaks to the downstairs apartment."

"Kid, you're not telling me something." Morgan pressed softly.

"I... the look of the water was wrong. The heat was wrong, and then the steam..."

"Reid, what are you talking about?"

"I don't know, Morgan," Reid said tremulously. "The water was just _wrong_... the _look_ of it."

"Kid, I am coming over there..."

"Morgan, I am fine."

"Even if I believed that, which I don't, I am going to help you clean up the mess." Morgan hung up then, before Reid could even begin to argue.

Reid put the phone back in the cradle and sat down wearily on his couch. He shut his eyes, and could still see the laughing skeleton, but now there was more... he let out a small, strangled noise, something between a laugh and a sob. _I am cracking up here._

The images were so clear._ Edward White was dragging him by the hair up the steps of the Oubliette, grinning maniacally. Elle was trailing him, staring at him curiously, apparently unaffected by his moans of pain. He was thrown near the bathtub- the same bathtub He'd found Elle floating in- and Edward White put the stopper in and turned on the tap. Just one- the hot water tap._

"_Please... don't."_

"_You're filthy. You vomited on yourself. You're disgusting." Edward White said solemnly, but he was still smiling._

"_Why did he puke, Elle?"_

"_He thought the skeleton was alive," the little girl said in the same solemn tone as her UnSub "father", but then began to laugh. The noise was unnerving and strange and disorienting and made Reid's skin crawl. In any other context her laugh would have sounded normal and happy and joyous, but given the circumstances, it was terrifying._

"_He thought the skeleton was alive, huh?" White said, and giggled... an actual giggle._

"_Please, don't do this." Reid could feel the incredible heat radiating off the tub._

"_You did it to yourself, boy. You stink." He was yanked up by his hair and thrown, protesting but weak, into the tub._

_The heat was disorienting and excruciating and he screamed and thrashed weakly, hollering. His heart was racing with fear and pain. _

"_You wash yourself, or I'll make it hotter," White said sternly, throwing the young man a steel wool scouring pad._

_Reid tried to gasp through the pain. During his career he'd been beaten and tortured, even shot. But nothing compared to this pain- this incredible, unbearable, inescapable heat._

"_I'll wash him, Daddy." Elle offered helpfully._

"_Elle...please...please help me..." Reid screamed. He couldn't stop screaming, but part of his mind had drifted above his body and was watching as a detached observer. Was this dying? Was this what being cooked alive felt like? God, if he ever got out of this in one piece, he'd never eat lobster again._

"_Stop being a baby," Elle said, and sunk her hands into the steaming water, apparently indifferent to the pain. She began to scrub his chest and neck. Reid choked and screamed and writhed before blackness took him._

"Reid?" Morgan sounded scared. Reid sat up with a jolt and looked at his friend.

"What happened?" Reid asked in a gasp and got up. He felt like he was going to panic.

"Kid, you're _white_. What the hell is going on?"

"Bathroom flooded." Reid said stubbornly, shaking his head in dismay. Derek Morgan's face hardened with concern but eventually the older man went to clean up the mess. Reid sat on his couch, head down, trying to make sense of what he'd just experienced. Had that happened? And if it had, why wasn't he burned?

Simple answer: the water had been hot enough to hurt like hell, but not hot enough to cause blistering. He'd probably been scarlet for a while, and then it had faded. Reid stared at his hands and flexed them, and considered this.

And how had Elle plunged her hands into that water without as much as a moan?

A few minutes later Morgan came back.

"Okay, I mopped up the water. Couldn't drain the tub, though... what were you thinking, only boiling water like that... _Reid_?"

"They washed me in scalding water. After I vomited. I can't remember." Reid gently hit the sides of his head with his fists, obviously frustrated. "Everything is strange and disconnected." He hit his head a bit harder and Morgan stepped forward.

"Reid... _stop_ hitting yourself!"

"None of it is in order!" Reid said miserably, and Morgan thought about that last comment. To Derek Morgan, things were often out of order, but he didn't have a near perfect memory. What was it like for Reid, not only to have huge gaping amnesiac pits in his mind, but also for the memories he did have, to be so strange and distorted?

"We'll figure out what happened, Kid. Just calm down."

"If I was drugged, we might never know what happened. Ever."

"Do you... do you really want to remember? I mean, these people tortured you. We know that for a certainty. If we can catch Dolores White and save those kids, do you really have to remember?"

"Yes," Reid said in a croak.

"_Why_?"

"The blackness... it's scarier than the memories. The blackness is scarier."

"Reid, people repress things for a reason. You know that."

"Elle..." He was up off the couch, scrambling for the phone. "Elle knows. She knows everything that happened. She'll tell me. I'll _make_ her tell me."

"Reid..."

Reid was still punching in numbers, the hospital paediatrics unit. From memory. Morgan grabbed his wrist lightly and took the phone. Put it back in the cradle.

"Reid, you heard that kiddie shrink over the phone. The kid is a little sociopath. She is not going to tell you anything useful..."

"I am a_ profiler_. I can profile a_ child_... now that I know what she _is_."

"You're already confused. She'll mix lies with the truth. You _know_ she will. All you'll accomplish by talking to her now is... you'll confuse yourself more, give her the upper hand, and anything solid we do have will be contaminated. She likes to control you. You know that."

"So what do we do then?" Reid barked impatiently. Morgan watched Spencer Reid pace, obviously agitated.

"We do what we do with any UnSub. We provoke them, not the other way around. We throw them off their game. Don't we?"

Reid eventually nodded.

"_She_ wants Dolores White... the woman she calls Mommy._ We_ want Dolores White. So we use _that_. We get her to tell us anything she might know about where this UnSub is, and we use that, and we find White. We find those kids. That'll have to be good enough."

Reid nodded again, but he didn't look convinced.

* * *

Okay, very short, I know. I have been kind of off my game for the last few weeks and really tired (having a very hard time focusing and concentrating on anything!), so I just wanted to update, so that readers of this know that I haven't abandoned it. This will probably be a fairly long story when I am eventually done with it, so I have to pace myself. **Please review **if you liked it! ANY review is better than nothing, because while I like being complimented (who doesn't?) I also like general feedback and I like knowing what readers DON'T like. Thanks again for reading!


	11. Chapter 11: Drugs

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Eleven)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None.

**Warnings:** Dark themes; violence; missing children/implied child abuse, lots of Reid angst...

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish (2008-ish), is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.

**Fan Fic Music Video Note:** I recently made a music video for this fic set to the song "Last Resort" by Papa Roach. If you are interested in watching this, go to YouTube and type in "lexikalfanfic", in quotations. A few videos should pop up (all fan fiction music videos so far). Select the one entitled _"This is my last Resort" Criminal Minds Fan Fiction Music Video, _and enjoy... or you can get the URL directly from my author's profile page. Take care, and happy reading! And, like always, **please review!**

**Chapter Note: **I have personally been dealing with constant "derealisation" following a blow to the head (concussion) about 2 and a half years ago, so I decided to incorporate that head space (no pun intended) into this story. Please excuse any plot holes or typos- I do my best to edit, but I have a really hard time concentrating most of the time, and mistakes are inevitable.

* * *

Morgan sat with Reid for a while, letting the younger man calm down for a few minutes before walking into Reid's kitchen and making coffee. Coffee seemed to be the FBI's answer to everything horrible in the world. A friend gets shot and you have to kill time in the ER waiting room? _Drink coffee_. A friend has a mild breakdown and floods their bathroom after a black-out spell; _make coffee_! Coffee was to FBI agents what tea probably was to the Brits, Morgan mused silently.

He opened Reid's fridge and shook his head, but couldn't suppress the tired smile. Aside from a jar of marmalade, a half empty carton of milk and two very bruised looking apples, Reid's fridge was empty. The cupboards were _completely_ empty.

"Good to know you keep your house stocked, in case of an emergency," Morgan called from the kitchen sarcastically. Reid didn't respond. Morgan closed the cupboard doors and pulled the phone in the kitchen from the wall and dialled a number he knew by heart; pizza, wings, ribs. It would have to do. He ordered two medium deluxe pizzas, soda and some barbeque wings even as he heard Spencer Reid protesting in the background.

"Food'll be here in under 30 or it's free," Morgan said, grinning as he came back into the living room. "I _love_ that place."

"Really, Morgan, you can just go home. I was just..."

"There is no food in this house. You flooded your bathroom. I'm hanging around for a little bit." It was said so simply, like a fact. What goes up; must come down. Leaving no room for debate. Reid sighed, walked into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee and came back out.

"I'm not hungry anyway-"

"I know. I heard you when I was on the phone."

"So, you're going to eat two pizzas and a bunch of chicken wings all by yourself?"

"I didn't say that," Morgan said, flashing his pearly whites dramatically. "You're going to help me eat _some_ of it."

Reid made a tired, irritated noise.

"Kid, you were _drugged_. People can have flashbacks, days, weeks... even months after taking hallucinogens, especially if they lose weight. You_ have_ to eat."

Reid chewed the inside of his cheek and considered this. "What if I have one of these... these_ trips_... out on the field? I had one at home... Morgan, if that happens at work, they'll _have_ to take my gun, make a notation in my jacket and..."

"Kid_, calm down_. You're under a lot of stress. You were hypnotized today. You came out of it suddenly, without being brought back out properly..."

"What_ else_ did Hotch tell you?" Reid asked, obviously uncomfortable. He didn't remember most of what he'd said while he'd been hypnotized, and the idea that Morgan might know more about his ordeal than he did was a little off-putting.

"Hotch told me you panicked, to stall you."

"No... I mean about the hypnotherapy session_ itself_. That's how you knew I came out of it suddenly. Did he tell you what I said _during_ it? If he did, he must've told you after I left for the day."

"He just told me what he thought would be pertinent to the case," Morgan said slowly, not sure how Reid would handle knowing that the entire team had seen the tape of him hypnotized after he'd left, had seen him writhe in panic, pace... even scream. Yell that his insides were falling out, the horror and panic reminding Morgan of his early years in Church, of his Sunday school classes about Hell and the gnarling and gnashing of teeth. Eternal tears. Watching the tape of Reid hypnotized, Morgan had felt ill himself.

No wonder the kid had freaked. And Morgan knew he'd- all of them- had only seen a tiny glimpse of what Reid had actually endured. The kid had come to suddenly, unable, even hypnotized, to relive the entire event. That said a_ lot_.

He doubted Reid would be okay with the fact that everyone had seen the tape, and he didn't want to be the one to tell Reid. He'd let Hotch handle that... that's what Hotch got paid the big bucks for, anyway.

"I'm_ not_ being put under again," Reid muttered. Morgan nodded.

"I'm going to go drain the water from the tub now," Morgan said, and quickly left for the bathroom. The water had cooled significantly. Morgan reached into the tub and jerked out the stopper, watching as the water began to drain away, making a slurping noise as it ran into the pipes.

He was on his way back to the living room when his cell began to vibrate. Derek Morgan pulled it from his pocket and opened it.

"_Yeah_?"

"How was he?" Garcia's voice was worried. Like Reid, she wore her heart, and emotions, on her sleeve. Morgan shot a look at Reid, who looked pale and weak and miserable.

"He's... you know, baby-doll. He had a rough time today."

"J.J. told me he was really upset in the bullpen... I mean_ uber_-upset, my love. Pulling at his sweater, pacing, little mini melt-down thing. No wonder, I guess, but..."

Morgan sighed. Reid glanced up and over at Morgan.

"Who is it?" Reid asked, raising his eyebrows.

"_Garcia_. Want to talk to her?"

"You're at his place? _Why_?" Garcia questioned quickly.

Spencer Reid considered this for a moment before extending a hand and flapping his fingers. Morgan handed his colleague his phone.

"Yeah... _Hi Garcia_..." Reid said tiredly. Morgan watched the younger man, knowing that Reid appreciated the concern and the love of his team-mates, but right now especially, was really on edge.

"No, _really_, I am okay. Yeah, just a bad day... Morgan? Ahh, I just flooded my bathroom, and he came over to help clean up. No, I'm_ not_ making that up. Yes, feel free to ask him. I know you will, Garcia. _Okay_. Yeah. See you tomorrow. You too."

Reid handed the cell back to Morgan and shut his eyes, looking annoyed. Morgan took the phone and sat down next to Reid.

"He sounds _really_ stressed," Garcia said simply, as if afraid to step on anybody's toes.

"He is," Morgan said, feeling slightly bad for the computer tech. "But yeah, he did_ really_ flood the bathroom..." Morgan added quickly, before Garcia could ask and Reid could become paranoid wondering about what Garcia was saying. What Morgan was hearing.

"Is he... J.J. and Prentiss spoke to Hotch today, after Reid left. I got to hear about the session. It was tape-recorded, so Hotch actually showed me, and... God, Morgan. I guess you didn't see it?"

"I did, actually," Morgan said simply, not wanting to pique Reid's curiosity.

"It was so hard to watch our boy like that, panicking like that. I- I _only_ saw it because Hotch wanted to know what drugs could cause the hallucinations and other symptoms Reid had shown, but not show up on a tox screen, and he thought if I saw the tape I'd have a better understanding than if he just described Reid's behaviour. Well, I did some checking... LSD in small doses probably wouldn't show up, and Reid was only checked for sedatives and tranquilizers, anything that would've knocked him out at the time of his abduction, not hallucinogens. Nobody knew to check him for hallucinogens when he was in the hospital..."

"And let me guess, now they'd be out of his circulatory system..."

Reid looked over at Morgan and mouthed: _What are you talking about?_ Morgan nodded at him, letting him know that he'd share the information as soon as he was off the phone and Reid nodded and shut his eyes again.

"Right you are, _sugar plum_," Garcia said, sounding frustrated, despite the term of endearment. "Although some hallucinogens can be stored in fat and hair samples for months, if not years."

"Great," Morgan said sarcastically. "Based on... what you know, do you have any theories?"

"LSD is cheap, easy to get your hands on and can have unpredictable results, including causing amnesia. There are several others, though... I printed out a full list for Hotch."

"Any that would cause hallucinations to that _degree_?" Morgan blurted and Reid's eyes flew open. He was staring at Morgan now, looking both uneasy and morbidly curious.

"Well, psychedelics could cause those reactions, but so could dissociatives- I was thinking a dissociative like PCP or ketamine mixed with a classic psychedelic like LSD, but then I took a look at our deliriants. While the dissociatives would induce a classic lucid-dream type effect, the deliriants would be much harder to trace and produce effects similar to those seen in people with high fevers, and the risk of amnesia is also higher. Hence, the name. Deliriants at high doses will cause sufferers to talk to people who aren't there and create the sensation that aspects of reality are ceasing to exist, when they aren't, all sorts of really nasty stuff... _the laughing skeleton_ and _insides falling out _being two classic examples. We're talking a real _Jacob's-Ladder _type head trip, here; producing feelings of rage and panic... out of the three main subtypes of hallucinogens, some sort of deliriant would be my guess..."

"_Baby-doll,_ what... what_ sort_ of deliriant? You have a name? Any theories?"

"Some of the more well-known deliriants include deadly nightshade, mandrake and henbane, all substances that pretty much nobody in this century would think to test for, but also, here is the kicker; extremely high doses of the antihistamines diphenhydramine and dimenhydrinate can cause the same effects. We're talking Benadryl and Dramamine there, stud-muffin, both of which are over the counter drugs. The half life of Benadryl, diphenhydramine is..." Morgan could hear keys being hit so fast they sounded like machine gun fire, "...approximately 2 to 8 hours, depending on metabolism, so that definitely means our boy wouldn't have tested positive for it if the timing was right. As for dimenhydrinate, AKA our good and trusty friend Dramamine, the half life is similar, I get a range depending on the site, but it's similar, 1-5 hours approximately, maybe a little longer in some people."

"So his symptoms could have been caused by some _over the counter_ medication?"

"It's possible," Garcia said, sounding distracted. "Or at least augmented by those drugs, and if he did have a concussion and was vomiting, they might have given him Dramamine to help with the nausea and just kept upping the dosage. And _if_ they were experimenting with any other hallucinogen, well... you have the recipe for a major freak-out disaster."

"Thanks, Garcia," Morgan said slowly, looking over at Reid, who was staring at him intently, obviously curious and impatient.

"Um... I'm going to go now."

"Of course," Garcia said, sounded distracted. "Phone if you need anything."

"What? You're not going home?" Morgan asked.

"I thought I'd do as much reading on these drugs as possible, and that's easier here than at home. Also, running the older images we found in the home, the photographs that didn't add up, through facial recognition software and also through the missing children's database, both here and in Canada, and also deconstructing the faces to compare to those of child skeletons found in the last..."

"You're busy, got it," Morgan said, smiling. "Thanks, Mama. I owe you one."

"You owe me a lot more than _one_," Garcia said cheekily. Morgan grinned wider and even Reid turned his head to the side and snorted laughter, having guessed that, the phone call coming to an end, Garcia was back to her usual flirting.

Morgan disconnected and put the cell back in his pocket.

"I want to know everything she just told you," Reid said instantly, eyes flashing both with curiosity and fear.

* * *

Morgan relayed most of what Garcia had told him over Pizza and wings, encouraging Reid to eat by bribing him with information. Reid had a few pieces of pizza and his colour was improving. He got up, poured himself another cup of coffee, and sat back down, turning to face Morgan.

"They could've caused symptoms like that with over the counter drugs?" Reid said incredulously.

"It's possible. Or made any potential drug-trip worse. Of course, they'd have to have given you a massive dose..."

"I don't remember being fed anything- force-fed pills, anything. Just the pain in my thigh, the injection."

"And we still don't know what that was," Morgan said calmly. "If you were unconscious it's possible that they could have made you lick LSD from blotter paper, and you wouldn't have been aware of it..."

"Yeah, but swallowing pills? While unconscious?"

"Once you were high on one drug, it could've been very easy to control you, get you to consume almost anything and you might not remember it. Obviously you don't remember it, because while you remember these hallucinatory memories, you can't tell us how the drug was delivered..."

Reid nodded sullenly. "I just don't get it, Morgan."

"Hmm? What's that?" Morgan asked, biting into another hot-wing and licking sauce from his fingers.

"Why anyone would ever willingly hallucinate like that. Take hallucinogens. It was... it was _terrifying_."

Morgan nodded in agreement. He knew from first-hand experience how scary drugs could be.

"Sometimes, Reid, people are so desperate to escape their lives that they are willing to face almost anything, even hallucinations that play out like acts from _Dante's Inferno_, just to forget. Just for a while. For some people, the risk is worth it. And not all hallucinatory drug trips are terrifying, Reid." Morgan sighed, took another bite of his chicken wing, before depositing the bones in a pile on his plate.

"You talk like you have personal experience with...with _this_," Reid said gently, finally glad that the focus of the conversation was off him and his abduction and torture and fear; his vulnerability.

"I do," Morgan admitted simply, without explaining more. Reid nodded. Thought for a moment. If Morgan didn't want to dig into the reasons why he had experimented- at the very least- with drugs, that was his business, but Reid was still curious.

"Did you ever experiment with Dramamine or Benadryl? The medications Garcia named?"

"No, but I used to ingest massive amounts of cough syrup with DXM..." Morgan trailed. "Starting at about the age of ten."

"After you witnessed your father's death." Reid prompted gently. Morgan nodded.

"_DXM_?" Reid asked, looking confused.

"It stands for_ Dextromethorphan_- it's a cough suppressant in many over the counter medications, mostly cold and cough syrups. It can _also _induce hallucinations if you take enough of it- technically I believe it acts as a dissociative hallucinogen, though I'd have to ask Garcia to be sure."

"And you... you took enough to _trip out_?" Reid asked uncertainly. For some reason, every time Spencer Reid said the word "trip" in relation to a drug high, Derek Morgan wanted to laugh. But he managed to nod seriously.

"What...what did you experience?"

"Well... I threw up a lot. Once I even threw up blood."

Reid was still, absorbing, almost afraid to move lest Morgan stop talking.

"At least it_ looked_ like blood, but I was also starting to hallucinate around that time, so... it's impossible to be certain. I heard voices that weren't there. They sounded... _demonic_. That's the only word I can use to describe those voices; they were chanting, like people at mass, but very strange, very distorted. I saw people that looked translucent, like ghosts, sort of passing across the street, between cars. Almost was hit by a car, myself, trailing after one of them."

"You were_ ten_ at the time?" Reid asked, trying to keep the disbelief and pity out of his voice.

"Yeah." Morgan shrugged. "Pretty stupid. I know."

"You... you did this _more_ than _once_?"

"I did that for_ years_, Reid. And some other stuff, too. Nothing really heavy, at least in the legal sense; everything I experimented with was legal, over the counter. I managed to convince myself that if the drugs I consumed were legal, not only were they safe, but I also knew I couldn't be arrested."

Reid nodded and licked his lips.

"So, you think it's possible that my...I could hallucinate severely and maybe black out... _just_ from over the counter drugs?"

"I _know_ it's possible, Reid." Morgan said flatly, standing up. He took the empty box of wings and the rest of the food to the kitchen. Tossed a box with a few slices of pizza in it into Reid's fridge, along with the soda and washed his hands.

"I'm scared Morgan," Reid admitted suddenly when Morgan came back. Morgan glanced over and nodded.

"I know, kid..."

"_No_. I mean...ever since I woke up in the hospital... everything feels _unrea_l. I feel spaced out. Like... like I am living in a _perpetual dream world_. Everything is a bit off, and it just won't leave. I know technically the term for this is derealisation, but I don't know if it will go. I am scared. I am scared it... will never leave." Reid stopped and looked over at Morgan. "My brain feels... _damaged_."

Derek Morgan didn't know what to say. But he knew he had to say something.

"You've just been through a trauma. You know how that-"

"I've been through traumatic experiences before. I've _never_ felt like this before, not constantly, _not for days on end_. During specific events, yes, and while I was in shock, yes... but not after the fact. _Not like this, Morgan_."

"Reid, I never experienced anything like that... what you just described, but some of my buddies smoked marijuana instead of doing cough syrup. One of them- keep in mind he was about 11 at the time- started complaining that everything felt like a dream, like a cartoon."

"Yes. That's how I feel, I guess...well, things don't look like cartoons, but I feel like I am not completely awake, like I am having a lucid dream. Even now, I am not sure, and there is tunnel vision, you look distorted. And_... I can't stop thinking about it._ It won't go away. Everything is distorted, but I am not actively hallucinating... but time and space feel distorted and strange. It's so eerie and hard to describe."

"If a genius with an IQ of 187 can't describe it, it _must_ be hard to describe," Morgan agreed. "Look, do you want me to phone Garcia? Maybe ask her to do some checking, see if your symptoms fit with any specific drugs, or are the symptoms of..."

"_No._ After my panic attack at work today, I think I am already at risk of being suspended. If Hotch thinks I am walking around, barely lucid, I'll be suspended for sure."

Morgan nodded.

"You won't tell anybody what I said...will you?" Reid asked then, and the worry was evident on his face.

"Reid, if something _happens_..."

"Morgan, you were the one that said they still needed me on this case..."

"I will keep what you told me to myself, unless I think you are endangering yourself or someone else."

"I don't think that will be an issue," Reid said flatly. Morgan nodded. Hoped it was true.

* * *

Okay, chapter 11 is over. Damn, DR sucks, so writing Reid as having it now... actually is a tiny bit therapeutic. **Please review.** Don't worry, I'll get back to the case, to Elle, and to tracking down Dolores White soon enough! Thanks again for all the reviews and people subscribing to my various stories. -Lexikal


	12. Chapter 12: Dreams or Madness

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Twelve)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None.

**Warnings:** Dark themes; violence; missing children/implied child abuse, lots of Reid angst...

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish (2008-ish), is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.

**Chapter Note: **The spaciness and grogginess that I've had for ages now is even worse due to medication changes and this story contains a lot of small details. I am trying my best to keep everything in order (the original blueprint, so to speak, for this story was quite detailed) but if something weird happens, well... Reid's mind is all jumbled up so that's my new excuse. I want to keep updating this but I feel high as a freaking kite on my meds (probably very similar to how Reid is supposed to feel in this story, ironically), it's very hard to think, let alone write, and I have to keep going back and re-reading old chapters of this story just to make sense of where I am and what I am doing. That said, I hope this chapter and those to come make sense, and don't have any plot holes, etc... please enjoy and if you have the time, review! **Also, thank you so much to the reviewer who said Elle was worse than Michael Myers. I have been a huge fan of the "Halloween" movies since I was a little girl, so that review was especially awesome (all the reviews have been great, but worse than Michael Myers? I actually grinned!) Thanks to all the readers, and reviewers, of this story.**

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* * *

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Reid undressed slowly for bed, and turned the shower on... he didn't black out this time. Showers, apparently, were okay. For now. He got into his pyjamas and looked at his bed, unwilling to sleep, afraid of what might creep up from his subconscious and snag him in his dreams. Eventually he walked back to the kitchen and put on another pot of coffee. He wasn't sure how many cups of coffee he'd had to drink that day, but his heart was still racing, and even though he was exhausted, he didn't want to sleep.

He sat down with his coffee on the sofa and turned on the television, flipping through the channels. Morgan had left hours ago and he knew he needed to sleep in order to function well, but the fear remained, lingering, like a tight band around his throat. He flipped through paid advertisements selling exercise gear, children's cartoons, and old history programs. Finally he turned back to a paid advertisement and watched it. Some sort of new blender that could apparently make almost anything you wanted to eat in a matter of seconds. It was called the _Magic Bullet_. Reid watched, bored out of his skull, but the inane chatter and "acting" were soothing in a strange way.

The people on the screen were blending up some sort of sauce for pasta now, and then they were making pesto sauce. Reid watched them dump the ingredients into the machine, turn it on... the pesto turned bright green and was spooned onto the pre-made pasta and then the television flickered and flashed.

"We can also use the _Magic Bullet_ to incite fear in guests," the announcer said, grinning wildly. Reid stared at the television, his breath starting to hitch. He glanced around the living room, but everything else looked normal...more or less. The announcer asked one of the "guests" on the infomercial for his hand and a rather chubby man grinned pleasantly and extended his hand without hesitation.

"_No_..." Spencer Reid muttered, staring in horror. _No. You're sleeping. Wake up. Wake up. You have to be sleeping, because if you're not, that means you've completely lost your mind. If you're not sleeping, you're psychotic. Oh God, no. Wake up!_

"With one, two... three quick seconds..._ look_! Nothing left of his hand! That hurts, eh? I bet that _hurt_!"

The chubby man held up a bleeding stump and nodded, before laughing dimly. The outside of Spencer Reid's television was splattered with blood. The young man got up off his sofa and crept to the television. He had to be dreaming. This _had_ to be a dream.

He touched the television, the blood. Brought his fingers back. Nothing. Nothing was there. When he glanced back to the television the chubby man was back to normal, and nobody was blending up hands. Even the man's hand was back to normal. What the _hell_ had just happened?

But then...there was a strange whine, and the television flared brightly again, so brightly that the inside of Reid's living room glowed white as if a nuclear bomb had just been dropped outside. He squinted his eyes shut against the onslaught and the television dimmed.

When he reopened them the infomercial was gone. Instead, there was a strange horror movie playing, a little blonde-haired girl and... _No_... This _wasn't_ a horror movie.

These were_ memories_.

He could see himself on his television, no longer tied up but lying in the straw, sweaty and shaking. Shock-white.

"_Spencer_..." Elle taunted sweetly and circled him like a small hyena. "I _know_ you're awake."

His entire body was trembling. He lifted himself, grunting, and stared around wild-eyed. Reid watched all of this unfold on the "television". _He wanted to wake up now. He wanted to wake up. He wanted to wake up!_

But he_ couldn't_.

"You're _fun_, Spencer..."

"Elle, what have you _done_?" The young man barked from where he lay in the straw. His eyes were glazed and unseeing.

"You don't like it? It's like being in a dream. It's_ fun_."

The young man on the television screen- _that's you Reid_- was beginning to hyperventilate.

"What...what's _happening_?"

"I don't know..." the child trailed, perching in the straw, watching intently. "It's different for everybody. What are you seeing? _Insanity_ is different for everyone..."

"God!" Reid shrieked and scuttled backwards in the straw, until his back hit the wall of the oubliette. "God, stop this." He was staring down at his arms, staring at them wildly.

"Get them off me! Get them off me!"

"Get what off you?" Elle said sweetly, too sweetly. She walked over to him and sat down near him, and as Reid watched the "television" in horror he saw the child remove an old-fashioned razor from her pocket. She flicked the razor open and offered the weapon to "Spencer".

"They're burrowing into me!" Reid howled and scrabbled at his arms.

"You can maybe...get them out with_ this_?" the girl suggested, and waved the razor again._ Reid-on-the-screen _stared at the razor for a moment, eyes blinking. Finally he shook his head.

"No...What have you_ done_? This is not real, it's a _hallucination_. There is nothing _really_ inside of me, nothing burrowing into me, this is _impossible_."

"We get cockroaches down here sometimes. _Maybe_ they laid their eggs in _you_," Elle said simply, apparently indifferent to her "big brother's" panic.

"Elle, stop it!" Reid made a move to grab her and she dropped the razor and scuttled backward. "Stop it! What is wrong with you?"

"Stop saying that, Spencer. Stop saying that. It's what is wrong with _you_, now, isn't it? You don't see me freaking out like you, do you?" The voice was very, very smug and pleased.

Reid continued to stare at the television, at the scene unfolding in front of him. Elle got up then and walked away, leaving him in the near-darkness lightly clawing at his arms, rocking and moaning. Eventually he heard footsteps again, heavier footsteps, and Edward White came back with the child. He was holding a shot gun.

"I hear you're picking on your little sister, boy," White said in a low growl. Reid eyed the shot gun, then Elle, then White. He was still hallucinating on-screen, apparently, glancing around and squinting, recoiling from invisible threats. But he could still see and hear White. And see the shot gun.

"No, I wasn't.._.picking_ on her."

"_Elle_?" White turned to look at the six-year-old.

"He _was_!"

"Are you tired of him, now? I told you he was too old for you. Much too old to be a play-mate. You never _listen_..."

Elle's eyes hardened.

"What are you _suggesting_, Daddy?"

"You know what I am suggesting, sweet-heart." The shot gun was raised. _Reid-on-the-screen_ put up his hands in an _I'm-no-threat-to-_you pose.

"You want to shoot him?" Elle said blandly, considering this. White grunted. Reid made a noise like a squeak.

"Elle, I am sorry, I didn't mean to pick on you... I am _sorry_, okay?" He was begging her. But he knew he was going to die. He was going to be killed with a shot gun.

Elle considered his begging, tilting her head to the side.

"How hard would it be to get _another_ one like him?" She finally asked her father doubtfully.

"Another one like_ him_? What do you _mean_?" White snapped impatiently, obviously gearing to kill something. _Someone_.

"FBI agent like him. How easy would it be?"

"You think taking him was _easy_? You think so? Well, it _wasn't_!"

_Reid-on-the-screen_ still had his hands up but his eyes were darting back and forth between Elle and Edward White, trying to make sense of their conversation. It was perhaps the most important conversation of his life; it would determine whether he lived or died.

"Wellll..." Elle trailed, like a child trying to decide what toys to keep and which to give up for the Good Will or the family garage sale. "He's still _kind_ of fun. I _guess_..."

"Elle, you come and get me when you're _tired_ of him or when you want to _play with Daddy's tools_... other than that... I have things to do..." White sounded angry, but he lowered the shot gun and stomped away, not even looking at Reid. He stomped back up the staircase, louder now than when he had come down.

Elle looked down at Reid and smiled. "I told you, you better be nice to me," the child stated simply. Reid nodded dully and licked his lips.

"Okay," he finally said, sounding resigned. "Okay, Elle."

* * *

Reid gasped and looked around. He was sitting on his sofa; the TV was still on, some other advertisement playing. He got up shakily and turned the television off, trembling. _Did I just dream that... or was that a hallucination? Am I going mad? _

He couldn't turn his brain off, and it felt very, very hard to breathe. He'd always been simultaneously frightened of his mother's disease, but at the same time, proud of her inner strength. But he had never really known what hallucinating was like. Was this what going mad was like? Was he developing schizophrenia? He knew that hallucinogens could sometimes trigger disorders like schizophrenia in people who were predisposed to them, and there was definitely a genetic link to schizophrenia. _God._

Reid licked his lips nervously, not sure what was real, what wasn't. Had that..._whatever it was_...actually happened? Or was he losing it? Was it just some random subconscious garbage caused by fear and stress and hallucinogens or a flashback to actual events? He didn't know, and worse than that, he didn't trust reality anymore. Would the ceiling suddenly fall and bury him alive? Would he start seeing ghosts walking in and out of the walls? Would he...

"Calm down," he ordered himself aloud. His breathing was faster now, bordering on hyperventilation. "Calm down, Spencer. Calm down."

He walked slowly into his bedroom, turning on all the lights as he went, eyes wary as he searched, afraid of what he might possibly see. He went to his desk and pulled out a sheaf of loose leaf paper, an envelope and a pen and walked back into the living room and sat down shakily. It was still hard to breathe, hard to think, and his fear was growing by the minute. A soul-deep terror that made him feel cold all over.

_I can't go mad. I can't go crazy. I can't...I won't._

He began to write, recording everything he had just experienced. When he was done he quickly re-read his scrawled note and sighed heavily, the sigh of a very old man. He folded the pages and stuffed them into the envelope, licked the envelope shut and hastily wrote Hotch's name on the front.

"Please, God...please don't let me go _crazy_..." His voice came out as a strangled whine.

The clock said it was 4:30 in the morning. In a few hours he'd have to get up anyway, and he doubted he could fall asleep again tonight, even if he wanted to. Exhaustion pulled at his muscles and tendons, but fear was stronger, almost fluorescent in its intensity and it lit up his brain and synapses with horrible possibilities for the future.

_Madness. Years of anti-psychotics and restraints and hypodermics full of Haldol and inane babbling in some backward of a psychiatric hospital._

"_Stop it_," Reid told himself sternly. "Just stop it. Even if it was a flashback from the drugs, that's probably _all_ it was. You know that. Stop scaring yourself with _what-ifs_, Spencer."

The derealisation- if that's what it really was- that had been ever-present since his rescue was still there and stronger than ever, giving everything a deformed, distorted, dreamy look.

_Please help me God. I just want my brain back. Please._

But somehow, he knew it wouldn't be that simple. If anything, he knew- on a level that went far deeper than the objective consciousness of his genius- that these symptoms were just the beginning of whatever fate was in store for him.

* * *

He was at work at 6:30 am, pacing. Hotch was in, but his office door was closed. Reid waited patiently. The rest of the team wasn't in yet.

Hotch's door opened suddenly and the older man came out and walked slowly down the steps into the bullpen before spotting Reid.

"Reid? Here a little early today, aren't you? Even for you, I mean." Hotch asked.

"I..um...can I speak to you?" Reid asked softly, eyes heavy-lidded. His hands were shaking though, a combination of too much caffeine and anxiety. Hotch nodded simply and indicated the young man should follow him back to his office. Hotch shut the door quietly and offered Reid a seat. Reid took it and exhaled deeply, then pulled the envelope from his satchel. He handed the envelope to Hotch without explanation, watching as the man's eyebrows lifted slightly.

"It's... it's not a letter of a resignation," Reid interjected as Hotch carefully opened the letter with his letter opener. "At least... not _yet_."

Hotch glanced over at his agent then, looking a little bit worried. The look faded quickly, however, and he turned back to the letter, neutral expression carefully back in place. He read the letter quickly, frowning towards the end. He then folded it up and carefully put it back in its envelope and stared at Spencer Reid.

"And...You don't know if this experience was a dream or a hallucination?" Hotch questioned, eyes sharp as a hawk's.

Reid shrugged. "I could have been dreaming, but honestly, I don't think so. It didn't feel like a dream. I thought...I thought you should know."

Hotch nodded again and seemed to think for a moment.

"And you still feel unreal and...Like everything is distorted and dream-like, right_ now_?"

Reid nodded glumly.

"I realize you're going to have to take my gun..." Reid started nervously. Hotch sighed wearily before finally nodding.

"I don't want to, Reid, but I can't risk you having a psychotic episode at work or out on the field. You know that."

Reid nodded tightly. _Psychotic episode._ God, hearing Hotch say it, suddenly made all of it more real, more vivid... more terrifying.

"I...they're going to retire me, aren't they? Too damaged now, aren't I?" the words were out before he could stop them. Hotch stared at Reid for a long moment without blinking.

"Spencer, we don't know what's going on yet. Right now, it could very well just be the effects of whatever you were drugged with..."

"I wasn't tested for hallucinogens, though, and that is not going to satisfy Strauss or _your_ superiors. You'll have to put a notation in my jacket if..._when_...you take my gun and after my addiction to Dilaudid, I doubt they'll keep me on." Reid's voice was miserable, choked.

"Reid, don't think about that right now..."

Reid sighed. "Do you...obviously I still can't be on this case. Not if there is a chance I might hallucinate. Maybe worse."

Hotch sighed then and rubbed a fist against his forehead. "Um..._look._ I don't see any reason why you can't stay on the case. No gun, you're right, I'll have to ask you for that. And I can't let you drive in your condition, if it's as disorienting as you claim. But aside from that, I don't see any reason why you should be off this case. You can still read, _right_?"

Reid nodded miserably. Yeah. He could still read.

"Look, just so we're both covered, I want you to see a doctor..."

Reid gulped audibly.

"I mean a _medical_ doctor, not a psychiatrist. I want you to describe your symptoms. I'll type up a letter stating we think you were drugged with some unknown hallucinogen or hallucinogens and maybe you can get a neurology consult. You stated earlier that you thought you had a concussion after being taken, and that can cause neurological damage. You know that."

"Okay," Reid said softly. "_Hotch_?"

"Yes?"

"You don't think...do you think I am going to...I mean_ schizophrenia_ can be triggered by..."

Hotch sighed tiredly. He knew Reid's fear, knew how scared Reid was.

"I think you should see a doctor first, get what can be medically checked out... checked out." He said simply, knowing it wouldn't satisfy Reid, but also knowing that the truth- the honest, unchecked truth- would upset him even more.

Reid already knew at least as much as he did about the stats for schizophrenia following substance abuse. He was obviously asking his superior for comfort, not speculation.

"I'll type up a letter describing your symptoms and our theories now," Hotch said simply, staring at his agent kindly. Reid nodded.

"You- you think I should see a doctor _today_?"

"I don't see any point in delaying seeing one. Not when you're still having symptoms."

"Yeah," Reid agreed softly. He turned to leave then, to go brood at his desk.

"Reid?"

"Yeah?"

"Whatever ends up happening...you are going to be okay. You know that, don't you?"

Reid shrugged and puffed out another breath. He _didn't_ know that. He didn't know anything of the sort.

* * *

That's it for chapter 12. The team will interview crazy little Elle again and hunt down Dolores White, but there is still plenty of Reid whumping ahead! **Please review**! I hope this made some sort of sense! I feel so spaced out, it's incredible (hums the tune to 'Alice in Wonderland'...) -Lexikal


	13. Chapter 13: Escape

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Thirteen)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None.

**Warnings:** Dark themes; violence; missing children/implied child abuse, lots of Reid angst...

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish (2008-ish), is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.

**Chapter Note: **I really should keep track of small details in long fics (in the future I will do that). I'll re-read old chapters so everything fits, but I couldn't sleep and got an idea for chapter thirteen, and I had to get up and write this. Enjoy and **please review.** I got out some index cards and wrote down basic details. This chapter takes place on day 4 after Reid's (and Elle's) rescue (I made an earlier mistake, when Reid was hypnotized; he (Reid) said it was almost 8.5 days since his abduction, I was off by a day). Again, I try to beta for typos; please excuse any that sneak by.

**Author's Note:** Many people have reviewed this now, and I am getting a lot of feedback that Elle is evil, etc... While I am glad you find her creepy (sort of the point of the character), this story is also about the root origins of so-called psychopaths. I'll admit, she is a very disturbed (and probably disturbing to most readers!) little character, but she is a lot more complicated than simply being "evil". I also wrote her as having Reactive Attachment Disorder (which she no doubt _does_ have at the very least), but not all kids with RAD are nearly this bad or "unattached" and this story isn't meant to cause unnecessary stigma for children with RAD or their families. If you want to watch a very good movie about Reactive Attachment Disorder I recommend watching the 1992 made-for-TV movie "Child of Rage" (based on the true life story of a little girl named Beth Thomas). I believe someone has the full movie up on YouTube. Oh yeah, it's almost 4:00 am right now and I am tired, so again, please forgive any typos or mistakes. Thank you.

* * *

"We have a _problem_." Hotch said, coming into the briefing room. He was late, just having gotten off the phone with the hospital. It was nearly 11:00 a.m. and briefings usually started sharply at 10:30.

"_Reid_?" Morgan asked, looking up. The rest of the team was silent, waiting.

"Well, Reid _is _having some problems, but I mean...Elle is missing." He didn't have time to go into Reid right now, Reid's earlier revelation. That would have to wait for later.

"_What_?" Rossi asked, perking up. "Her room was heavily guarded! No one in or _out_. Even the child _herself_..."

Hotch sat down, looking more distressed than the rest of the team could ever remember seeing him.

"Elle's IV was removed yesterday evening, around 7:00. Yesterday was also when she was interviewed, as you all no doubt remember..."

Silence hung over the room like a potential thundercloud. When would the storm hit? Everyone was waiting for Hotch to speak next.

"The hospital was apparently running low on beds-_ rooms_- and a child around Elle's age was admitted about 8:00 yesterday evening to the ICU so they moved her into Elle's room."

The silence was eerie now. Nobody liked where this seemed to be going.

"At around 11:00 there was a room check and the child- Samantha Adams- was found dead. Cardiac arrest. She'd been admitted for cardiac problems and it was touch and go, but no alarms went off at the estimated time of death. There was no alarm, and then a sudden flat-line. They came in, and just found her dead... they attempted to revive her for over 10 minutes so we know for a certainty that the child in that bed, at that time, _was _Samantha Adams. When their attempts failed, they asked a security guard to come and move the body to the morgue, and the guard checked the admission bracelet, which he is adamant belonged to Samantha Adams. Things were hectic. Elle was apparently asleep, and by the time they checked on her next, which was about 1 in the morning, they found a dead child in her bed..."

"Let me guess...they found Samantha Adams in Elle's bed?" Morgan's voice was surprisingly devoid of emotion.

"Yes," Hotch said flatly. "Same hair colour... and the nurses on duty last night were fairly new."

"Elle swapped their medical bracelets and..._What_? Got herself wheeled down to the morgue?" Prentiss asked, blinking slowly, as if trying to make sense of a very difficult and convoluted game. Which wasn't far from the truth.

"At the very least," Hotch said. "Thing is, she didn't hang around. She was wheeled inside, the room was locked, but the door opens from the inside. Nobody expects the dead to escape. The hospital staff checked the morgue immediately when they realized she was missing. No sign of Elle."

"She used this child's death as a way to escape." Prentiss said, shaking her head.

"_Prentiss_," Hotch said sternly, looking his agent in the eyes. "Samantha Adams' death was too _convenient_. We know at the very least she changed their hospital bracelets. But someone shut off the cardiac monitor... and Elle was the only other person in the room."

"She killed this child," Morgan said dismally.

Hotch nodded. "Almost certainly, and at the very least she watched the child go into cardiac arrest and used it as a ruse to escape. She unplugged the machines. The staff apparently locked down the hospital, but she would have had about two hours on them before they even noticed she was missing."

"How far can a six year old get in pyjamas with no money?" Morgan asked.

"I don't know," Hotch said simply. "I don't know many six-year-olds who could think up such an elaborate escape plan, but this one did."

"So many things could have gone wrong." Prentiss murmured. "How did she know this would work?"

"My guess is she didn't. She took a risk- _a very large risk_- and she got _lucky_."

"APB?" Rossi asked unnecessarily.

"And an amber alert, but this child is smart. Smarter than any of us realized. Maybe smarter than we think, even now. She is going to keep a low profile."

"So what do we do now? This kid was our last real lead..." Prentiss sighed.

"J.J. is getting her photo out on the news but...basically, we find her." Hotch finished tiredly.

"She was shot in the stomach, what, four _days_ ago? She shouldn't even be mobile!" Morgan barked angrily.

And yet she was.

* * *

_It had almost been too easy._ The girl had been on a stretcher in the hall, hooked up to a monitor, with an IV, her lips blue. She'd asked about the child around lights out time.

"She can share my room."

"That's...your room is guarded, honey." The nurse had said kindly.

"I don't mind. And I don't mind if her Mommy and Daddy visit her, either. I can keep her_ company_," and then she'd smiled, like she had at Spencer. And the nurse had smiled back, just like she'd known she would, and gone to check, muttering something about not enough rooms, and then the girl had been wheeled into the room and hooked up to a little oxygen machine and another machine.

Her name had been Samantha. She'd had something wrong with her heart. Was good as dead anyway, _really_... No harm, no foul.

"They put these things on too loose," Elle had said conversationally when they were alone, and went on to show the girl how to pull the hospital bracelet off. Samantha had laughed.

"Why are you here?" Elle pressed, staring at the child.

"My heart... I was born with a bad heart. Waiting for a transplant." Samantha had responded.

"_Oh_. Me, I just got shot in the stomach, is all. Say...we should switch medical bracelets. It'll be funny."

"I don't know."

"What? You afraid of getting in trouble?"

"No..."

"They'll just laugh and make us switch back." Elle coaxed.

"_Well_..."

"Come on, it's easy. You don't even have to get out of bed." And Elle had gotten out of her own bed then, bracelet already removed, and then she'd changed them. And gone back to her own bed to wait. This had to be timed _carefully_.

Except Samantha was a baby. She fell asleep very fast. And that was all it took. Elle hadn't really wanted to do it...not _really_... but she had to get away. Her parents had told her about psychiatrists and psychologists before and one had already come, earlier in the day. There would be more, now. She knew it. He didn't smile as easily as the nurses. She couldn't fool him. She'd fooled him a _little_, but not enough, and that was dangerous. Being in this place was _dangerous_.

So she'd taken the pillow from her bed and put it over the girl's face, but the heart machine had started to beep too fast. Elle then fiddled with some buttons and the red lights and waves and beeps shut off. She put the pillow back over the girl's face and pressed down. Samantha hadn't even struggled. And when she checked, she pressed two fingers to her neck, like she'd felt Spencer do to her, but there was no beat, no pulse. When she removed the pillow, Samantha's eyes were open and shiny,_ but nobody was home._

The next part had been harder. If it didn't work, well...they couldn't prove anything, not anything _serious_. But they'd _suspect_- the FBI and that stupid shrink would suspect. She had wanted to make sure the bracelet moved off the girl, and it had. And her bracelet did, too, of course. She put Samantha's bracelet back on and turned the machines back on. A loud whine filled the air and she went back to her bed.

Nurses and doctors rushed in then, but they were night staff and didn't really know her, or Samantha. No wonder so many babies got switched at birth. She closed the curtains around her own little bed and blinked blearily, and then pretended to go back to sleep. She distantly heard someone say the child was dead and they called the time.

_Leave the body, leave the body, leave the body...just for a few minutes. I need to make a switch._

They'd run out of the room then and Elle had worked quickly, her own heart fluttering with adrenaline. She switched the bracelets back in matter of seconds, and put Samantha in her bed and crawled in and played dead. She'd half-expected them to wheel the dead girl right out of the room, instantly, but they hadn't. They'd left her.

Within minutes a man in a uniform came in. Elle cracked an eye open and then shut them again. She heard him mutter something about how he wasn't paid enough to deal with this shit. Then he'd covered her with a white sheet and wheeled her out of the room. She'd almost wanted to laugh, but she'd managed not to, not to make any noise. Barely breathe, even. Her heart had been racing the entire time.

She felt and heard them entire an elevator. Her parents had told her about hospitals, and morgues, how they were usually in the basement, and sure enough the man wheeled her into a room, left the sheet over her, and she heard him walk away. For a moment, there, she'd been scared he'd lock her in one of those little cold drawers for dead people, but he hadn't. The morgue was very bright, very white, and she wanted to hang around and explore- it looked like the dungeon- but she hadn't had the time, unfortunately.

She waited a few minutes, then quickly climbed off the gurney and opened the morgue's door just a fraction of an inch, just to see... but the hall was empty. She'd run then, run for the elevator, but there had been another door. It said Emergency Fire Exit, and she bit her lip, considering it. Maybe it was hooked up to an alarm? But when she pressed it open, no alarm went off. She was in a gray cement stairwell and she ran up a few levels. One level read P2. Parking 2. She ducked out of the door and into the underground parking.

And then it was a matter of not being seen. She'd seen video cameras in the hallway, but by the time they- the doctors, the shrinks,_ any_ of them- saw the film she'd be long gone. She checked out different cars, until finally finding one that was unlocked. But no good...someone could see. So she got out of the car and checked around a little more. Then she heard voices, a man talking. Security guard?

And there it had been, like it was sent from God himself. A pick-up truck. The back was nearly empty, but there were tarps. She crawled into the back of the truck, under a tarp, and waited.

And _waited_. But eventually she heard footsteps and then felt the motor rev, and she was gone. She didn't know exactly where the driver was going, but he could get her away from this horrible place a lot faster than by walking, and even though she had hospital pyjamas on, and not a gown, a little kid walking around barefoot in pyjamas would attract attention.

Stupid FBI. Thought they were so damn smart.

Elle grinned to herself. Her stomach still really hurt, but she was already formulating another plan. There was scrap metal in the back of the pick-up truck, and some of it was really sharp at the ends. That made some of the stomach pain more acceptable.

* * *

**End of chapter note**: Want to post this chapter. I realize it is short but it's also late at night and I am not sure if any more will make sense. I hope you enjoyed it (**please review**!), and yes, Elle is a devious little character (and yes, a lot of things COULD have gone wrong with her "plan", as Prentiss pointed out). Elle did what she did impulsively anyway... and I do know that some hospitals have security guards take bodies down to the morgue. Some of them are left inside for the pathologist, if he or she is only going to be a few minutes, without being locked in a "drawer" so this plan could have worked in real life. It also could have failed, and she took a LOT of risks, but she is impulsive, and that's a sign of what, in adults, is called "Antisocial Personality Disorder" (the term "psychopath" isn't an actual diagnosis). She could have been caught SO many times, too, and the fact that she was willing to kill another child when her escape wasn't even guaranteed makes her creepier, even to me.


	14. Chapter 14: Footage

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Fourteen)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None.

**Warnings:** Dark themes; violence; missing children/implied child abuse, lots of Reid angst...

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish (2008-ish), is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.

**Author's Note:** Yes, I realize that Elle's escape seems unbelievable, but it is still possible and more will be explained in this chapter. Also, the kid took a lot of risks trying to escape and part of her actions were probably just for the adrenaline rush...she was willing to risk it. Even if she hadn't managed to get away, she was still willing to risk it. As for the security guard who wheeled her to the morgue, the guy was/is young and new to the job, and who really expects a "dead" six year old to escape? I think most people wouldn't think twice about a small child who was declared dead and is unmoving, well, escaping. I know I certainly wouldn't ever think that could happen in that situation, and that's part of what makes Elle so devious. More will be explained in this chapter, and yes, as a reviewer mentioned bodies are generally "wrapped" (put in body bags) before being moved to the morgue, but all of that will be explained. Even so, it wouldn't have stopped her at the point. The kid is nuts, and more than that, she is terrified of the hospital and being interviewed. Her actions were horrendous, true, but they were fuelled by fear, so it's important to remember that this killing wasn't for the "fun" of it, it was a means to an end.

* * *

Hotch and Rossi had gone to the hospital and were interviewing the security guard who had taken "Samantha Adams" to the morgue. The young man was named Devon Cross and was very, very upset.

"Look, I didn't do anything _wrong_. They said the kid was _dead_. They told me to move her to the morgue. I checked the bracelet; it was the right one, the kid wasn't moving..."

"Did you check for a pulse?" Rossi asked.

"No. But we usually don't check pulses when someone is declared dead. And this was a little...a _little kid_." His voice was shaking. "She wasn't moving at all. I saw her. _No movement_."

"Isn't it typical for the body to be put in a body bag before it's taken downstairs?" Rossi asked. He was mad- not really at the 22 year old security guard- just at the entire situation. The guard was just a kid, new to the job, working the night shift.

"Yeah, I asked them. They said it was a kid, just take her. There was another kid in the room sleeping, so I just put the sheet on... I was going to come back and bag her, but honestly..." He lowered his voice. "I've only been working in hospitals, moving stiffs, for less than a week. Before that I patrolled the outside of court houses at night. Generally one of the other guards helps me with bagging and boarding..."

"Boarding?" Hotch asked, raising his eyebrows a little bit, just the tiniest degree.

"Putting them...you know...in a drawer. And yes, before you ask, the hand was sort of warm, but the child had just bitten the dust...of course she'd still be warm." His voice was shaking. "I _didn't_ mess up. I went to find Davis- the other guard I know- to ask about the bag, help me with her. I've only moved a few bodies, like two, before this kid, and never moved an actual kid before." Devon reached out and grabbed his coffee and took a few swigs. His hands were shaking.

"I-I _know_ this is very serious. I _know_. But would you expect a child that you honestly believe is dead to get up off the gurney and leave the morgue? When I came back and saw that there was no corpse on the gurney, I thought Davis had already bagged and boarded her, until I asked him later, and then...then we knew. But that was about 12:30 or so. I mean, you don't expect a_ dead_ child to escape. There is a reason the morgue only locks from the _outside_." Devon shook his head in exasperation.

"Nobody is blaming you for not doing your job properly." Hotch said. Devon snorted tiredly.

"No? Then why is this kid missing? I already know the kid I should've wheeled down was found dead, so...the kid I wheeled off was a little psycho. _Right_?"

Hotch and Rossi exchanged glances. The official story was that Elle had been kidnapped from the hospital and that Dolores White might have her.

"About that... for the sake of this case, Devon, we are telling the public this child was kidnapped."

"But she wasn't!" Devon said. "If she murdered that other kid... and at the very least she dragged another child's corpse out of her bed and propped it up in her own...then shouldn't the public know what she is capable of?"

"Right now that isn't the best course of action." Rossi said simply. He sighed. "Look, we brought our computer tech. She seized the hospital security footage. We want you to go through it with us, just so we can get a time-line for last night's events. Can you do that?"

Devon nodded solemnly. Hotch stood up and left the room and came back with Garcia, who looked a little more worried and a lot less bubbly than usual. Introductions were brief. They were stationed in one of the hospital's conference rooms. Devon had been kept on night-shift all night, and then called back from home to meet with the FBI. His eyes were red-rimmed and haunted. The young man would probably never, ever see "dead" bodies the same way again.

There was a Television and VCR on a stand in the room and Garcia pushed the VHS tape into the VCR and pressed play. She already had the scenes she thought related to last night's events, but they needed Devon there to be sure. The film was grainy and they couldn't allow anything to potentially be overlooked... not _anything_ at this point.

There weren't video cameras in individual hospital rooms, but there were in the halls and the elevators, and there was one in the morgue. And there were several in the parking lots.

The video footage read 11:23 pm. A young man was pushing a white stretcher down a hallway in the children's ICU.

"Yeah, that's me...and see? No movement._ See_?"

Garcia nodded. Hotch and Rossi were both staring hard at the screen, looking for anything, anything at all. Anything that could be found. They saw Devon wheel the gurney onto the elevator and because he was looking down, they couldn't really see the young guard's face, but the sheet on the gurney was completely still. No movement at all, nothing that registered on the film. Elle was apparently very good at staying still. The elevator descended and then they were on the lowest floor and the young man on the television screen wheeled the gurney through the hallways, head bent down. Still no movement from the gurney. He stopped in front of a door and took a ring of keys from his pocket, keys attached to a chain and flipped through them, until he found the right one. The morgue was unlocked then, he pushed her inside and put the brakes on the gurney. They saw him stare at the gurney for a moment, make the sign of the cross- none of them said anything in response to this- and then he left, looking depressed.

Obviously, Devon Cross had thought she was dead. And from the quick snatch of his face they had seen on the film, he looked upset. He left the morgue and there was nothing, no movement. They watched the seconds flicker by on the corner of the screen. At the two minute and 36 second mark there was the tiniest movement. The sheet near "Samantha's" head moved just a bit, just enough for the child to see. A few more seconds passed and then the sheet was hastily pushed aside. The child- clearly Elle on screen- clambered off the gurney. They saw her wince, and then look around. She glanced up, saw the video camera and then..._smiled._

"She knew we'd see this," Rossi murmured. Garcia was silent. She'd already seen this footage, and it was more than a little disturbing to her. "She knew we'd see this sooner or later...that smile was meant for us." Rossi repeated.

The child on the screen walked closer to the video camera and craned her head up. The video footage was in black and white but they could see black starting to spread on the front of her pyjamas- she'd clearly ripped her stitches with all that strenuous activity. And gauging from the footage was bleeding quite a bit. She stared at the camera for a moment longer and smiled wider.

"You think you're so smart," the child on the screen said in a rasp, and coughed. Her voice was tinged with pain, but also excitement. "But I escaped, and now you're _screwed_, aren't you? I'm not going to give you a chance to kill me."

"She definitely meant for us to watch this," Hotch agreed glumly.

"That last part though...about killing her...look at her eyes. She looks angry. She...do you think she believes we'd physically harm her?" Rossi asked. They seemed to have forgotten Devon Cross was still in the room. When they looked over at him, the young man's face had drained of colour.

Rossi stood up and extended a hand. "Thank you for your time. Please remember what we told you...as far as the public knows, this child was kidnapped."

"They should _know_." Devon said sharply, staring at the three federal agents in front of him. "They need to know we have a little psycho running around."

"That would stir up panic." Hotch said simply. "We can count on you to help keep this part of our investigation secure?" Hotch asked. Devon looked back at the screen and shuddered, but finally nodded.

"Yeah. Just catch the _bad seed_, there... and..._Yeah_." And he left then, muttering under his breath.

"Garcia, would you rewind that last part?" Hotch asked. Garcia nodded and pressed rewind on the remote.

"I'm not going to give you a chance to kill me," Elle said on the security footage. "And now the deal is off." This was followed by a rather colourful series of expletives.

"She didn't learn to talk like that watching _Sesame Street_..." Garcia trailed. Both Hotch and Rossi ignored the comment. Elle stared around the morgue, eyes wide, grin still in place, and then finally shuffled to the door and pulled it open. The watched her and then she stepped into the hall. Garcia had split the footage. They saw her in the hall. She glanced in the direction she had just been wheeled, towards the elevators, and then reconsidered. She glanced to the right and quickly- as fast as she probably could- hobbled towards what looked like a fire-escape. She pulled the door open and the footage cut to the stairwell. She climbed stairs and got off at P2, entered the parking lot. They lost track of her a few times now.

"That's how she got away, in all likelihood. She broke into a car, or found one unlocked." Rossi muttered.

"Garcia, you checked _all_ the footage? Couldn't find one of this child getting into _any_ vehicle?" Hotch pressed.

Garcia shook her head miserably.

The time on the video tape read 11:35 pm.

"Garcia," Hotch said, looking over at their tech. "I want you to find out who was parked in P2 between 11:35 pm last night and when she was found missing, a little after one. There should be a video camera at the exit and entrances to the parking lot, right?"

"Almost certainly, sir."

"I want to know who left here between that time span, and if possible, a make and model of any vehicles, and if you can see it on film, the license plates. Elle is _smart_. She'd probably look for some vehicle large enough to hide in..."

"Like a pick-up truck?"

"Exactly. And given that this is an urban centre, any pick-ups should stand out, but look at_ all_ the vehicles. It was late so there shouldn't have been that many leaving."

"Got it," Garcia said.

"Garcia, when I said look at all vehicles, I meant it. At this point, I wouldn't put it past this child to hotwire a car and drive out of the parking lot herself."

Garcia nodded. Left the room.

Hotch looked over at Rossi. They were alone now.

"David, we underestimated this child from the beginning. Yes, she was abducted at three, but we thought White was the dominant and his wife was subservient, then later realized we might have had those roles reversed- that is wife, while psychotic, may have been the one telling her husband what to do and he may have been operating out of fear- and then, when we started really looking at Elle's involvement it was always as a child who had been coaxed or had Stockholm. But..."

"What if they just took Elle and every other child... every other abduction...was _her_ idea? She was the dominant one and controlling two killers the entire time?"

"I don't know what to think anymore," Hotch said. "The abductions started fairly soon after she was abducted herself and I doubt she was this damaged at that point. And yet, she shows a level of planning and intelligence we never suspected. This escape was risky, true, but it was also very clever. Part of the reason it worked was that Elle is a child and she knew nobody would suspect anything...at least not right away."

"What are you saying, Aaron?" Rossi pressed. He had some idea, but he still wanted to know what his colleague was thinking.

"This child's intelligence is clearly in the superior range, no matter how risky her behaviour last night was. It was risky, but it was also an extremely clever plan. And it was a plan she must have devised fairly quickly because she had no way of knowing a child around her age that looked similar to her would be admitted to the same ward and would need a room. That meant she thought it up on the spur of the moment, more or less, which makes it probably riskier in execution than it would have been if she had had time to really plan something over a longer course of time. What if she didn't simply take Reid because he was an adult or a man or a law enforcement officer? What if she took Reid because he is a genius?"

"You think Elle is a_ genius_?" Rossi asked.

"I think it's more than possible. And I think it is more than a coincidence that out of everyone in the park that day, she selected Reid, the most intelligent of us all..."

"Reid assumed it was because she had a preference, age-wise."

"This other police officer that Reid mentioned Elle speaking about... what if his name wasn't actually David? What if he wasn't actually 21? Or even a police officer?"

"You want Garcia to check for missing males in 2006 in the genius range in Virginia?"

"Yes," Hotch said. "And considering that an IQ of 130 on the WAIS is considered the top 2 percent of the population and Elle, in all likelihood is probably several standard deviations above that at the very least, if I had to guess, and Reid himself has an IQ of 187... It will narrow the search down quite a bit. If she is selecting the men for their intelligence, she'd probably want someone of similar intelligence, IQ-wise. Too high and they'd outsmart her and make her feel inferior, too far beneath her and they wouldn't be challenging enough."

"Are you honestly telling me that you think Elle is close to Reid, in terms of intelligence?" Rossi asked, sounding surprised.

"I think she played us. I think she played stupid. And she fooled us, David. I don't know what her IQ is, but I think this is an angle we need to look at..."

David Rossi was silent. Absorbing.

"It might be wise, then, to talk to Elle's-_ Lise Miller's_- extended family. Find out if they can tell us anything about what she was like for the first three and a half years of her life. That will tell us a lot more."

Hotch nodded.

* * *

Hotch, Rossi and Garcia got back to the team at 1:30 pm. Reid was just coming back, apparently, from the doctor. He looked shaky and pale. Hotch leaned over to Morgan.

"You didn't tell him about Elle, did you?"

"No." Morgan said quickly. "No one did."

Hotch nodded and walked over to his youngest agent. "Reid, let's go talk in my office."

"Yeah..." Reid said softly, looking highly disturbed. Hotch softly closed the door and Reid took a seat, sighing heavily.

"Apparently flashbacks and hallucinations are common in people who have taken hallucinogens, even once. The persistent feeling of unreality and brain fog- for lack of a better term- might be something called HPPD. _Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder_. It's continual and can include auras, visual hallucinations, trails, feelings of unreality... if I have it... it might leave in a few weeks, or months, or years... or possibly _never_. It's an actual diagnosis in the DSM-4, and I'd heard about it before but never really paid it much attention..." Reid fell silent. He looked almost ready to cry.

Hotch wanted to say something comforting, but he knew Reid needed to hear this.

"Reid, I...I am sorry. I really am. But you need to know...something has happened."

Reid instantly perked up, looking even more worried.

"What's wrong? Is it my Mom? Is she okay?"

"Your mother is _fine_, Reid."

"What is it?" Reid asked uncertainly.

"Elle escaped from the hospital last night."

"What? _How_? Her room was guarded and..."

"Another child was put in her room, and we think Elle may have killed the child- we are still waiting on the autopsy results, but right now we're assuming her room-mate was smothered- and then Elle hopped a ride on the gurney down to the morgue and escaped when the guard left her unattended. I can brief you in more detail later."

"_God_..." Reid breathed. He looked about ready to faint. Hotch watched him carefully.

"Her method of escape, obviously, was extremely high-risk, but also very... it shows a great deal of intelligence. We haven't spoken to Lise Miller's extended family up until now because we wanted to solve the case first before potentially re-traumatizing these people, but we're going to phone them now. We need to know what they remember of this child, what she was like for the first 3 and a half years of her life."

Reid nodded sullenly. "Yeah. That makes sense."

"There is something else. We have underestimated this child's deviance from the beginning, but also her intelligence. She may not have taken you because you are a man or law enforcement or for any of those reasons. She may have taken you because, in terms of intelligence, you would have been a challenge. You may have been seen as a worthy opponent."

Reid lifted his head slowly, awareness dawning.

"Then...the police officer she told me about...might just be some random male with a high IQ from this area and...?"

Hotch nodded. "Possibly. Or not. So far every time we think we have this case pinned down it seems to slip out from beneath us."

"Yeah."

"The team is waiting in the briefing room. We're set to call Lise Miller's maternal uncle and his wife- they knew her the best. Lise's father was an only child and his parents died before she was born, and Lise's maternal grandfather is dead and her grandmother has Alzheimer's..."

"Let's hope they can tell us something."

Hotch nodded and got up for the briefing room, Reid following behind him. He stopped at the door.

"And Reid? I am...I am sorry about...I'm sorry about what you're going through right now."

Reid nodded dully. He was sorry, too.

* * *

That's it for chapter 14, I have a few tricks up my sleeve for the plot and I think quite a few of you will be surprised very soon. **Please review!**


	15. Chapter 15: Hospitalizations

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Fifteen)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None.

**Warnings:** Dark themes; violence; missing children/implied child abuse, lots of Reid angst...

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish (2008-ish), is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.

* * *

The video conference with Elle's maternal uncle and his wife was scheduled to take place at 2:00 pm. At 1:55 pm Reid entered the room carrying a large cup of black coffee, a steno pad and a pen and sat down, ignoring the concerned looks his team mates were shooting him.

The Uncle had previously been contacted, apparently, and told that the little missing girl from the news- the one who had been "kidnapped" from a hospital in Virginia- might be his "late" niece, Lise.

Garcia had set up everything so that his face would be on the television, as well as on the computer screen, and the video conference would be tape recorded. He was at the local Boston PD because he didn't have a computer capable of video conferences.

At precisely 2:00 the call was made, and the conference started. Gregory Miller was in his mid-fifties, balding, clean-shaven. He looked slightly nervous.

"Mr. Miller?" Hotch said, by way of starting the interview. "My name is Agent Hotchner, and I have the rest of my team here with me." Hotch then introduced each member of his "team" while Gregory Miller nodded silently and Reid fidgeted, desperate for answers.

"You said over the phone that the little girl from the news _might_ be Lise?" Gregory Miller said anxiously when the introductions were done with.

"We believe she might be your niece, yes," Hotch said simply, not wanting to give away too much. "We are looking for her right now, to the best of our abilities, but we wanted to talk to you. Right now we need as much information as possible. We were wondering what you could tell us about Lise. What you remember."

Something dark shifted over the man's features but was then gone.

"_Lise_? Why? She was only three when she was...taken...whatever happened to her. She was only three."

"I understand that, sir, but anything you can tell us might help the investigation."

"How?" The man sounded exasperated.

"We believe the people who took Lise took her for a specific reason... that they wanted a certain type of child. What was she like when you knew her?"

"She was three years old!" The man repeated, looking distressed. "Aren't all three year olds_ basically _alike?"

"No, sir, they're not..." Reid cut in, moving so that the man on the screen could see him. "If this little girl really is Lise, than she is not behaving like a typical six year old either..."

Hotch shot Reid a warning glance. Reid took a sip of his coffee and ignored Hotch.

"What the _hell_ is that supposed to mean?" Miller asked.

"The child we interviewed at the hospital, who may be Lise, was extremely intelligent, for one thing..." Reid mollified. Gregory Miller was nodding now.

"Well, _yeah_. Lise's parents- especially my sister- were always going on about how bright she was. They wanted her tested, but apparently no psychologist they could find was willing- or able- to perform an IQ test on a three year old child."

Reid nodded and began to take down rapid notes.

"Can you give us any examples of your niece's intelligence?" Hotch pressed.

"Well, I always thought a good deal of my sister's babbling was that Lise was her first child, the normal parent's over-estimating their children type thing. Um, I know she was toilet trained before she was two, and reading before two as well, and apparently neither my sister or her husband had taught her to read. That child_ did_ speak more like an eight or nine year old, even at three, which was a bit weird. Even before she was a year, she was speaking in complete sentences, but more than _that_ what stood out was how..._weird_ she was." The man fell silent, lost in memories.

"Weird?" Reid pressed.

"You ever see that movie _Village of the Damned_? How_ fast_ those kids learn things? Lise was like that. She was more than just bright, though, and I said so. And so did the shrinks. She had a way of staring at you, even as a toddler that was just plain eerie. Like she was sizing you up or something. And weird stuff happened when she was around..."

"Can you give us an example, sir?" Hotch asked.

"She would've been about two and a half or so, shortly after she got out of the hospital, but..."

"_Hospital_?" Reid piped up, writing faster now.

"Yeah, first two, two and a half years of that child's life she was sick with leukemia. She got well again, survived, was declared fine... but when they brought her home for good, she just wasn't_ right_. My dog, when she was over here...my golden lab was the sweetest dog in the world and came downstairs with blood on her, but there was no blood on Lise. Lise said the dog had bitten her, but my dog hid under the table and it was my _dog_ that was bleeding, not that _child_... and after that I just didn't want her around my boys. No matter how old she was."

Reid was nodding to himself.

"Sir, you mentioned psychiatrists..._shrinks_? Do you remember what that was about?" Hotch prodded.

"She got really bad as the months flickered by. Was still...bright, of course...but her behaviour was frightening. Apparently there was some concern that she was emotionally damaged or something, because she'd been in the hospital since infancy, never really picked up or anything, she was terrified of hospitals. Something to do with bonding...some bonding problem..."

Reid was taking faster gulps of his coffee, writing faster.

"Was she in therapy for this...bonding _problem_?" Reid finally asked.

"She was analyzed or something...assessed? Yeah, assessed. But my sister was wary of shrinks, and then all those reports of children being killed during holding-therapy and re-birthing therapy started popping up on the news, and my sister- Margie- she thought all Lise needed was more love and attention. Said her baby had been deprived of enough, and she wasn't about to start traumatizing a baby for problems that were her fault."

"Your sister blamed herself for Lise's emotional problems?" Rossi asked seriously. The man on the computer screen shrugged.

"I don't think she blamed herself, but she felt guilty that her child was a train-wreck, if that's what you mean. I know that I was surprised when they took her to a shrink... so her behaviour must've gotten worse. That child could do nothing wrong in their eyes, so in order for them to take her to one of those shrinks, she must've been acting up pretty badly..."

Reid was nodding again, even though he wasn't facing the computer and the man couldn't see him.

"If you do some digging you should be able to get the assessment or at least speak to the shrink that first looked her over...I don't think she was given an actual diagnosis, but some term started being thrown around a lot shortly before Lise's disappearance, and I know her mother said that Lise hated seeing the shrinks, was frightened because they reminded her of medical doctors and that child was petrified of doctors of all sorts..."

"The term they used to describe her condition...her behaviour...do you remember what it was?" Hotch asked.

"Reactive...Reactive something? It was a long time ago."

"_Reactive attachment disorder_?" Reid said softly, not really a question. A statement.

"Yeah, that was the one. I did some research on it on the internet and then I _really_ didn't want her around my boys anymore..."

"How old were your children at the time?" Rossi asked conversationally.

"I have four sons. Michael is 16 now, so he would've been thirteen when Lise was three. George is ten now, Patrick is 7 and Scotty is 6, same age as Lise, give or take a few months."

"Do you think your sons would be willing to talk to us?" Hotch asked, not really expecting a positive response.

"Patrick and Scott were practically babies themselves. I am not sure they could tell you much. I know she scared George pretty badly when he was about seven, but he never told me why, and she put Mikey on edge. I am not sure any of them would be any help to you. Listen, I hope you find her, and I hope she is okay... but if she is anything like she was then..."

Hotch nodded. He already knew what the man was saying. _I don't want that child back in my life._

"And your wife? Might she remember anything in addition to what you told us?"

"I doubt it," Gregory Miller said, keeping his tone neutral. "I highly doubt it."

"Alright, Mr. Miller...Thank you for your time."

"I hope you find her... one thing that never did sit well with me..."

"What's that?" Reid said, still writing, not even looking up.

"Her parents were executed and Lise was just..._never found_. And as ridiculous as this probably sounds, I never really did think that child was dead, even though she was proclaimed dead. There was just something about the entire murder that didn't make sense, but I can't put my finger on it..."

"You don't think Lise hurt her parents?" Reid pressed, still writing, obviously distracted.

"Of course not! She was_ three_! But... then again, I'd never seen a three year old with eyes like that before..."

"Eyes like what, sir?" Hotch asked.

"On the surface, she seemed sweet and bubbly and bright, right? Every mother's dream child. But then, you'd catch her looking at you when she didn't think you were watching her, or when she was angry, and there was something else in them that I've never seen in such a young child's eyes. This darkness, if that makes any sense. Like looking into two tiny little black holes. Probably sounds stupid, but you'd have had to be there, I guess..."

"It doesn't sound stupid at all." Reid muttered, barely loud enough for anyone in the room to hear him, let alone Gregory Miller, but Hotch caught it, and so did Morgan, who was sitting right next to Reid.

"Thank you for your time, sir," Hotch said then, shooting Reid another look. "We'll be in touch as we learn more."

"Yeah, okay..." Miller said, but he didn't sound particularly enthusiastic. The conference ended there and the entire team was silent. Reid was the first to speak.

"Dolores and Edward White abducted a child who _already_ had an attachment disorder. That explains both the level of her malice now, and also why they were afraid of her..."

"They were afraid of her? Reid, they shot her and tortured her, according to your own memories..." Morgan argued.

"Probably because they were_ afraid_ of her." Reid snapped back.

"Reid, Edward and Dolores White were _killers_. Whatever problems this child obviously had, they made them much worse. They _executed_ her parents right in front of her, allowed her to be involved in the abduction process and allowed her to play God. They were _adults_. Dolores was..._is_...psychotic. Her actions, and what you told us about her when you were relatively lucid back up that theory, and Edward White, if not a full-blown psychopath, definitely didn't show much respect for the law or the sanctity of human life." Morgan argued.

"_Sanctity of human life_..." Reid trailed, sounding almost amused. "_How much respect do you think Lise...Elle...has for the sanctity of human life_?"

Hotch cut off the bantering then.

"Garcia, do you think you could track down this child's psych records, and find out about her early hospitalizations?"

"On it, Captain..." Garcia said, eyes darting between Morgan and Reid as she quickly left the room.

"I knew something didn't fit... RAD generally develops in the first three years of life, and even if Lise, or Elle, or whatever you want to call her now was taken at three and a half, if she had been attached at that age, she'd be disturbed now, but not nearly to the same degree..." Reid mused, almost as if he were talking to himself. He wrote down a few more lines on his steno pad.

He looked over at the rest of the team then, suddenly feeling deflated.

"Did Garcia run all the video footage of vehicles leaving P2 when Elle escaped?"

"Almost all of them have been ruled out. We are still waiting on a few, trying to get in contact with the owners." Prentiss answered.

"If she did stow away in somebody's vehicle, she is most certainly not just going to catch a ride and then go about her merry little way," Reid said almost sarcastically. "We need to be focusing on the drivers of those vehicles we haven't spoken to yet. Their lives might be in danger."

"Reid, she may not have even gotten in a vehicle, she could be on foot..." Rossi interrupted, but even he didn't really believe that.

"Yeah, and she might be a sweet, perfectly adjusted little girl who, with a bit of love and cookies, will return back to normal once this entire mess is sorted out," Reid groused miserably. "Of course she got in a vehicle."

"_Reid_-" Hotch said sharply.

"Hotch, she _did_ get in some sort of vehicle, and until everyone's accounted for, we are wasting time. And possibly putting someone's life at risk."

"She's been missing since about 11:30 last night. If she was going to hurt someone... she probably would have done so already."

"Let's hope you're right." Reid said sourly. He turned back to his steno pad, where the notes had trailed away into a doodle of a cherubic looking small girl, but peaking up around her back and neck were wings. Not angel wings made of feathers, either, but dark black, leathery bat wings.

* * *

**End of chapter note:** Relatively boring chapter, I guess, but it provided some much needed info for the reader. I will get more into the cool hallucinations and the chase for Elle (and her psychotic "mother") soon enough. And yes, children can develop RAD from prolonged hospitalizations in early childhood (they fail to bond to a primary caregiver because they are so sick and they are often in pain or feeling sick if they need to be hospitalized, see a sea of endless faces- which isn't good for infants and young children that are learning to bond- and sometimes, not always, can develop RAD (there is also thought to be a predisposition to this disorder, as clearly not ALL children who are severely ill as babies and young children develop it or we'd have a major mess on our hands). Most of what "we" know about RAD comes from infants and toddlers from Slavic, over-worked orphanages who are then adopted, brought back to North America (never having bonded in very early life) and develop severe symptoms, but abuse, neglect, being shifted among many primary caregivers early in life (such as multiple foster home placements in infancy and toddlerhood) can cause RAD, as can multiple hospitalizations in some scenarios. Basically any situation which interrupts the normal mother (or mother-type caregiver) and infant bonding process can lead to this disorder. A good, nonjudgmental website for learning more about RAD in real life is .org Take care and I promise the upcoming chapters will be more exciting, but this was a necessary chapter, because it explains WHY Elle is so maladjusted- she already had bonding problems BEFORE her parents were killed, and that act (the murder of her parents) sort of sealed the deal. Not to mention that after the fact she was raised with killers... no, not good at all. Like always, please excuse any typos. And **please review!** I write more when people review, honestly! *grins*


	16. Chapter 16: Tappahannock

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Sixteen)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None.

**Warnings:** Dark themes; violence; missing children/implied child abuse, lots of Reid angst...

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish (2008-ish), is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.

**Author's Note:** Whoa, this is an ancient one. I just re-read it, and have to apologize for all the typos and the crazy italicizations. Have no idea what I was thinking. This is an oldie, and I would just as soon axe it but it has a few fans left, so I will finish it off. The song Elle sings a line from is "Mairzy Doats" by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston and recored by the Pied Pipers in 1944 and immortalized by "Leland Palmer" (played by the inimitable Ray Wise) on Twin Peaks. If you want to know what it sounds like, check it out on youtube, of course. The map information is part researched and part guessed. I can't get too obsessive with map directions for a fictional story like this, but those are all real places and that interstate is the right one. I am having a lot of trouble with this story because this sotry is so damn unrealistic and, frankly, over the top crazy. I am pretty sure I was hammered or high when I wrote the first fifteen chapters, because the plot is just ridiculous. But ridiculous can be fun, I guess (hope so). And before any new readers say it- this story was started LONG before the Moseley Lane episode, so please don't tell me I ripped that off. Please review (if you feel like it, that is)

* * *

The truck came to a stop after about an hour or so of movement. Elle kept still, waited. Heard the door open, heard a man say "Jesus Christ," and there was movement as someone ruffled through what sounded like papers. The door shut again and Elle heard heavy boot steps on the macadam. She held onto the scrap of metal- a crowbar, she was pretty sure it was called- but the steps got farther and farther away. She took a breath and peeked out from under the tarp.

She was on a suburban street lit up by low pressure sodium streetlamps. Everything was cast in an eldritch orange glow. Elle waited a beat, scanned the gloomy street. Nobody, she could see nobody. Carefully, slowly, she crawled out from under the tarp completely, launched herself over the bed of the truck and fell to the ground on her bare feet. An area on her hospital pyjamas, right where she had been shot, was blooming what looked like black paint under the street lamps. Elle scowled. She was bleeding again.

Carefully, she crept up along the side of the truck, tried the door. Like she'd expected, it opened easily. Elle squinted in the gloom, saw a disorganized interior scattered with newspapers and fast food wrappers and some little boy's action figure from some cartoon she didn't recognize. Elle grinned, grabbed at the action figure. Toys in the truck cab made it fairly likely that the driver had a child, and if the driver had a child... that was important information. Elle let the action figure fall back to the cluttered passanger seat and popped the glove compartment open. Inside, much to her delight, she found an opened twinkie and a juice box. The Twinkie was stale, but still edible. There was also a map of the whole state of Virginia in there. Elle grabbed the twinkie, juice box and the map, pulled out of the truck cab and carefully- as silently as possible- shut the door.

She was acutely aware of being noticed. Anyone might look out their window or come out late to put garbage out on the curb, and there they might see her, a little 6 year old in pajamas with bunnies on them and a growing bloom of blood on the abdomen like a hellish rorschach picture, and they would invariably yell at her, ask her what she was doing or, maybe even worse, try to "help".

She had to get out of the open, and get out sooner rather than later. Elle let her eyes adjust, pretended to be some great, wild cat that hunted at night and willed her vision to improve. She scanned the street for the darkest yards, yards where she could more easily disappear into the blackness. Two houses down on her left was a two-storey salt box set far back from the street. No lights on on the stoop or in the windows and the streetlamp outside it was off. Elle hunched over and half-stumbled, half-ran, towards it. She felt much, much safer when she was in the blackness, much more at home. She eyed the yard while drinking the juicebox (God, she'd been thirsty!), trying to take in eveything and anything that might be of use. There was a ceramic frog on the concrete stoop with stupid, cartoon eyes. Elle picked it up, looked it over. Nothing. She lifted up the rattan welcome mat. Nothing. She hit jackpack under the ugly garden gnome with the chipped hat. Taped to the bottom of the garden gnome was a little silver key. Elle looked at it, looked at the door of the house. Moved the key into the lock, and turned, as slowly and quietly and carefully as she could. The door opened with nary a sound and she edged the screen door shut.

The foyer of the little salt box was thick with shadows. Elle squinted and scanned the front hallway, took a step and checked to hear if her ankle cracked or the boards moaned. Nothing. No sounds. Her heart was beating a bit too fast, and she willed for it to shut the fuck up. She crept into a large living room with an old console television sitting on the carpet. Framed photos on the top of it. More photos on the walls. An older model chesterfield with a crochet throw on it's back. Hooked rugs of geese and kittens on the wall, macrame owl decorations from a long-ago time. God, these people had hideous fucking taste.

In the kitchen she found a row of jackets hanging on wooden pegs. There were also raincoats, including one child sized coat. Elle pulled it from it's hook and over her head. Bright pink- not really a colour she'd ever cared for- but it would have to do. In the shoe rack she found corresponding pink boots with cartoon lady bug faces on the toes. Elle scowled, kept looking. Found a pair of small sneakers with velcro straps that looked more or less her size. She undid the velcro straps and wiggled her feet into them. Perfect fit. Which meant there had to be more useful stuff around here that she could use. Elle glanced around. Wandered through the kitchen and found a door. She carefully cracked it open and was met with a staircase leading to what was, no doubt, a basement. Elle watched television and knew that most people, most families, did not have dungeons, but still, for a second or two, she was lit up with nervous energy. She willed herself down the steps, trying to ignore the nervous tremors now running through her legs.

"You stop that right now," Elle hissed at her legs. Sometimes her legs and arms did this, when she was scared, or excited. They started trembling, or shaking, and she had to take deep breaths and talk herself down. But she didn't have time to talk her body down right now. She tiptoed a few steps forward and put one sneakered foot on the first step of the staircase, wincing, almost expecting the stair to crumble under her or an alarm to go off, but the floor held and there was no noise.

Elle smiled and put down the other foot. The floor held steady. No traps. No noise. Slowly, carefully, the 6 year old descended the staircase in this manner until she was at the bottom, standing on concrete ground. She knew from television and the layout of her own "home" that there might be a light switch on the wall, but the idea of turning on the lights scared her. Someone upstairs, coming into the kitchen for a nocturnal drink of water or snack might see the thin band of light under the door. No. Elle squinted harder. There was some light down here coming from a few high-up windows. As the seconds passed, she could see more.

In the far right corner, flush with the wall, was what looked to be a hot water heater and an old boxey washing machine and dryer. Above the washer and dryer was a shelf of some sort. The child moved towards the washer and dryer, eyes slitted in the dark. A box of Tide laundry detergent rested on the shelf above, Fleecy fabric softener in a bottle, Biz stain remover, a box of dryer sheets and a plastic laundry basket. Suspicious eyes scanned the rest of the room. Half the room was concrete, the other half had a very cheap, thin carpetting on it. The thin carpetting side had a beat up old sofa and bean bag chairs, a small Television screwed into the wall and a VCR with a collection of old Disney VHS tapes. There was a large green table with a net across it (Elle wasn't sure what this was for, but she knew instinctively it was for playing some sort of game), and buckets along the wall opposite the washer and dryer, plastic buckets inside wooden cubes. She approached and slid one of the plastic buckets out of it's wooden frame, was confronted with foam puzzle pieces and plastic dinky cars, rag dolls and plastic farm animals. The walls were concrete but large metal boards had been bolted to the walls above the plastic buckets full of toys, and held on the metal boards with magnets were photographs of two children (always the same two) and a scattering of simplistic childrens' drawings etched out in crayon.

One of the pictures was of a small hand, traced with dark ink, then altered to look like a Thanksgiving turkey. The name in the corner, in boxy, stupid printing read: EMMA. Elle pulled this off the magnet board and sneered at it, suddenly furiously angry for a reason she could not consciously make sense of.

"Fucking stupid baby with her stupid hand turkey," Elle hissed in the gloom at the hand-cum-turkey, before crumbling the drawing up and tossing it unceremoniously to the floor. She moved more quickly around the basement after crumpling up that god-damned picture. In a hamper near the washing machine, on the concrete ground, she found a small backpack. "Dora the Explorer", the backpack read, and there was a cartoon of a large-eyed hispanic girl on the back smiling stupidly at the viewer. Elle knew the show because Julie liked it, and even though it was incredibly stupid, she had a tiny little soft sport in her heart for Julie. She had seen Dora three or four times, at Julie's insistence. Utterly, utterly stupid.

"Fucking idiots. What a load of crap," Elle mumbled, but unzipped the backpack and dumped the contents out. Inside was an ancient, squishy banana (luckily, it hadn't appeared to leak it's fruity goodness out inside the pack), a workbook entitled "Math Skills 1" and a pencil bag. Elle left the crap on the floor and crept back towards the washer and dryer. Holding her breath, she gently tugged open the dryer door and looked inside. There were little girl t-shirts and a pair of jeans and socks.

Elle pulled off her rain coat and then, quickly, feeling the sudden need to get dressed and get away, she pulled her pyjama top off her head. The black blossom on the abdomnen was larger and had grown cold and sticky. She let the pyjama top fall to the ground and shrugged into a T-shirt (some stupid, saccharine cartoon was on the front, of course), then wriggled out of the pyjama pants and into the jeans. The jeans were slightly baggy, but not so loose that there was any chance of them sliding down. Elle pulled on a pair of the socks and then quickly rammed her feet back into the sneakers, tightened the velcro straps. The bloody pyjamas she stuffed back into the backpack, along with the state map she'd liberated from the truck driver's glove compartment. Feeling watched and exposed, the child zipped everything into the bag, leaving only the top open for quick additions and crept back up the stairs. She wanted to get out of here (every impulse was telling her that the longer she stayed in this place, the more danger she was in) and once again entered the kitchen. In one of the cupboards she found a sealed box of fruit rollups and that she carefully shoved into the backpack, along with a foil wrapped pop tart. Her brain was screaming at her, suddenly, that she was _thirsty as fuck_ and she had to scream back at it to shut up. Eyes closed, Elle tugged the fridge open. Inside were three unopened cans of pepsi. She added them to what she had looted and crept back into the main hallway. Reconsidered and marched back into the kitchen. She was certain that at any moment someone would ask her what she was doing or she would meet some scary adult in the shadows who would stare at her with dangerous, knowing eyes before tackling her to the ground, but none of that happened. She slid open drawers and found a long serrated knife- the kind used to slice bread- and that was added to the backpack. On the counter was a ceramic cookie jar and, instinct taking over, she found three 20 dollar bills inside. Elle took all three of them.

"Get out of here, now," She whispered to herself in the dark and it took every bit of effort not to physically run from the house. In the hallway a shadow moved across her lower field of vision and she yelped. Waited. No noise from the bedrooms upstairs. The shadow belonged to a rather fat house cat. It stood looking at her dispassionately, then tilted it's head and meowed at her.

"Shut up," Elle hissed at the cat scornfully. In response, it meowed louder, walked up to her, slid it's body against her legs. Elle scowled at it and shooed it away. It stumbled back and stared at her with equal parts indifference and knowing. She frowned at it. Elle had never liked cats. The cat looked at her lazily and then darted back into the gloom and she lost sight of it as it turned a corner in the hallway. She crept backwards to the front door, slowly crept out the door and over the threshold, and gently eased the door shut. She shut her eyes and counted to ten, expecting a trap, expecting bells and whistles to go off now that she had gotten the basics she needed to get back to Mommy, but there was no sudden squealing of alarms, no helicopter spotlights or police shouting mercilessly on loudspeakers. The 6 year old waited another 5 seconds, opened her eyes, and glanced around suspiciously. The street was still washed in that eerie, awful orange and still mercifully empty.

Elle crept off the front stoop, crept around in the garden, head lowered and bent, movements somehow both skitterish and slow. Her body wanted her to just grab one of the pepsis and chug, but she also knew that that would be impulsive, and a waste of resources. In the garden she found the hose and the tap, turned the handle to the right, waited. The water was warm and tasted like metal, but it did its trick and put a damper in that screaming, insistent she was done with her drink she wiped her face with the sleeve of the raincoat, hitched that fucking stupid Dora the Explorer backup higher on her back and marched back to the street. For a second she had considered creeping through backyards, but the idea that a motion sensored flood light might catch her in its beams was worse than being on the main street.

She didn't know where she was, but she knew that if she got to a main road she could check on the map. There had to be a bus stop or something around here no doubt, and when it lightened up a bit, she might be able to buy something at a convenience store with one of the twenty dollar bills and get change for the bus. Then it would be just a matter of waiting for the bus, and getting onboard.

Elle smiled to herself. Began to sing a song Daddy had had liked to play, something old and on "vinyl".

_"Oh, mairzy doats and doazy doats and little amsy dive-y... a kiddly divey too, wouldn't you?"_ The song was silly, it was nonsense, some light-hearted number from a long-ago time in the past called the fifties. It made the dark and black creepy quiet of the night seem _somehow not as scary, though. _

_"Oooohhh, if the words sound quuueeeer, and fun-neee to your earrr, a little bit jum-bled and ji-veeeey, sing: mares. eat. oats... and does. eat. oats...and litttttlllle laaaambss eat iv-eeeeey..."_

Elle really wished she knew the time- it was so hard to tell what time it was just going off guessing alone- especially when doing something exciting- and forced herself to walk faster. She had small legs and they would figure out she had escaped soon enough. _They_, meaning the FBI. _They_, meaning Spencer.

_"Ohhh, mairzy doats, and doazy doats... and little amsy dive-y... a kiddle eat ivy too, wouldn't you?"_

She considered Spencer and frowned. Everything had gone wrong with him. It had gone wrong with David, but not nearly as fast. Spencer had freaked out at the drugs, true... and that was part of the fun, also true... but everything had seemed to fall apart other than that, too. Mommy, for instance. She had been even weirder than normal. The shit had hit the fan. Hit it in hours, not weeks. So much planning and work for such a little reward.

Fucking Spencer.

_"A kid'll eat ivy, too, wouldn't you?"_

* * *

Elle had been walking for at least an hour, by her own estimation. She was coated with a second skin of sweat under the little raincoat and her stomach was hurting her. She could feel where it was bleeding again, but the blood felt cold, so it was obviously not bleeding that hard. Elle was walking along a highway, far back from the cars. Tiredly, she sat down on the grass and rifled through the backpack. Pulled out one of the Pepsis and depressed the tab. She drank quickly, waited, burped. The sky was getting light, so it had to be about 6:30 in the morning, something like that. Inside the backpack were the bloody pyjamas. Elle frowned down at them, pulled them out and left them in a bundle where she sat. Damned things. They reeked of that fucking, evil hospital. When she was done with her pepsi she stood up, brushed over her backside and threw the can over her shoulder in the direction of the pyjamas. Continued to walk.

About 20 minutes later the highway seemed to form into something a little less wide and a sidewalk appeared. Elle kept back from the sidewalk, hidden by a copse of trees which ran the length of it. She didn't want to take a chance of walking on it, alone, in the very early morning hours and having some "good samaritan" pull out their cell phone and call the cops because a little kid was unaccompanied by an all-important adult. Elle didn't know if that was likely to happen or not (god, people could be such nosey buggers) and because she didn't know, she refused to take the chance.

About 10 minutes after the little sidewalk started she was in another suburban area. She followed the road and saw a bus stop, with a bench by it. She had no idea how much the bus cost, or even where it was going, but if it followed this road it was going in the general direction she needed. Elle pulled the map out, double checked the road she was on. She frowned at the map, irritated. So many little names, so many lines. All so confusing. The summer house was in a secluded little place called Tappahannock. Elle found it on the map, smiled. From looking at road signs, she knew she was just outside Richmond on Interstate 95. Tappahonnock was on some orange road called 17, nestled in trees with a squiggle of blue jutting in from the ocean. Elle sighed tiredly. Wasn't sure how many miles she had to go. 50? No. More than that. This map was crap. So hard to read.

But she had a general idea now. When she got a bit closer to Tappahonnock, maybe she could call Bucky. Bucky was 41 years old but had the mind of a child even younger than her (but, of course, she had the mind of a much older body). Bucky was Mommy's brother and he lived in a trailer park a stone's throw away from the summer house. Bucky would come get her. He didn't have a car, and he couldn't drive. He wasn't even allowed to have a license. But he had a bicycle with a wagon attached to the back and he was in shape. He'd come get her, or tell Mommy where she was and that would be that. As long as she got a bit closer, first. Had to be a local call, Buck didn't pick up the phone if the call was more than 10 or 12 miles away. He was weird that way.

Elle sat down on the bench and waited.

15 minutes after 7 in the morning a bus sighed to the stop and the doors fluttered open. Elle boarded the bus.

"How much?" She asked confidently, hating the high-pitched youngness of her own voice.

"Where's your mom? Or dad?" The driver said, gazing back out the door, eyes scanning for the mandatory adult chaperone. Elle scowled, told herself to smile.

"I'm twelve," she said confidently, forcing herself to make eye contact with the driver, a guy in his early thirties.

"Twelve?" The driver did not seem convinced.

"I have a growth disorder," Elle mumbled, and averted her eyes. "Anyway... how much is the ticket?"

"A buck fifty," the driver said, staring at her. She hated the way he was staring at her. "Where you going?"

It seemed so innocent, such a natural thing to say that Elle almost told him. Caught herself at the last minute. Remembered a name on the map further east.

"Reedsville,"

"Reedsville? Way out there? You got quite a way."

"Ah, it doesn't matter. My uncle is going to pick me up when I get close," Elle said, but in her head she was picturing burning the bus driver's brains out with the power of her mind, was watching hsi brains smoking and leaking out of his eye sockets and down his ugly, nosey face. "Do you go in that general direction at least?"

"I go north, then you can connect to one of the smaller busses going out that way. Might have to take a greyhound, I think."

"You go near one of those greyhound places?" Elle asked, trying to remain cool.

"Uh... I think the next one is in Fredericksburg," the driver said. "But... seriously, you're not twelve, are you? You look younger than twelve."

Elle blinked. Had the sudden urge to stab him with her serrated kitchen knife, or saw that ugly, fat head off his shoulders. _Mr. Fucking nosey-pants. Mind your own fucking business, Mr. fucking nosey-pants... _

"I'm twelve and I have a growth disorder," she said again, stiffly. The driver sighed, looked unsure of what to do. Elle made a decision then. She got off the bus. The hair on the back of her neck was prickling up. This asshole was asking waaaay too many questions.

"I thought you wanted...?" The bus driver trailed, trying to remember the destination the little girl had told him. "Reedsville?"

"I'll take the next one," Elle said coldly.

The driver stared at her a moment longer, blinked owlishly. The doors hissed shut and the bus pulled away. Elle watched him go, hating the way her heart was racing with fear.

"Mr. Nosey Pants. Mother _fucker_," She said sourly, and spat on the ground. But at least she knew busses stopped here, now, and that they went north (all the way to Fredericksburg, at the very least). Maybe she'd go all the way up there and jump on a greyhound bus, then double back to Tappahannock. It was hard to know what to do. All her instincts were telling her to run, or hide, or stay undetected. Not for the first time in her short life, Elle (previously Lise Miller, though she preferred not to think about that dreamy, long ago other life) wished she could become invisible at will. She knew only about busses from books and the television, and from Mommy and Daddy telling her about the "outside world". She loved them, sort of. Even though, in her gut, she knew they were different than normal "parents", maybe more violent... but they had saved her from those assholes who had put her in that hospital when she was little, that crazy torturous place where she was held down and pricked with needles, where blood was drawn even as she screamed at them not to steal it, where their poison had crept into her tiny almost-baby body and made her shiver and shake, made her puke and cry. Mommy and Daddy had saved her from those people, those horrible people that were only spoken of two or three times since they'd taken her from the car seat so many years ago. Her "biological" parents. Just thinking of them made her want to to hit something. Hit it hard.

Elle didn't get on a bus until 8:30 a.m. The previous experience had spooked her. This time, however, she had walked a bit farther and purchased a Baby Ruth at a gas station. When the bus arrived she dropped a dollar and two quarters into the meter, waited for the stub, and took it without a word. The driver didn't say a word, and for that, Elle was profoundly grateful. 6 was young, but 6 didn't mean stupid. It didn't mean baby. And a precocious 6 year old was capable of quite a lot.

Elle slumped into her seat and stared out the window. Her stomach began to cramp, hard, enough to make her moan in pain, about 5 minutes after she sat down and she hissed at it to stop. To be good. Stupid stomach. In that irritatingly juvenile Dora the Explorer backpack, a fruit rollup was waiting for her to eat it. She removed it, tore off the foil, wrapped the red, sticky film of candy around her right pointer finger and began to suckle it. Every minute she spent on the bus and got closer to Mommy, the better she felt.

* * *

**Please review.** I will force myself to write 5 paragraphs for each review (mental games like that are the main way I get things done in life)! And yes, I know this story is over-the-top unrealistic. I can't really believe I came up with it, but I did. I have to finish it now or it will bug me. I also know that I used way too many italics in the first 15 chapters, and again, I am sorry for that. I also know that a 6 year old, even a highly intelligent 6 year old with reactive attachment disorder, wouldn't be *this* precocious and capable- but hey, it's fiction, and I have always loved the evil, precocious child meme. That Rhoda Penmark from _The Bad Seed_ left quite an impression in my mind, as did crazy little Kevin Khatchadourian from "We Need to Talk About Kevin" by Lionel Shriver (I love that movie, and love the book, but I can't see any way to write fan fic about it). Young kids are capable of quite a lot more than we give them credit for, anyway, so while this is unrealistic, it is not as unrealistic as many people might assume at first glance. And while evil children are fun to write, it is important to remember that pure evil is rarely as black-and-white as made out to be in fiction or movies (although, I do personally still believe in evil and sickness, and am not totally convinced that all violent or sadistic human behavior is a product of sickness or mental illness... I do believe in evil, lung-cancer-black evil, but the philsophical argument behind that doesn't play into this fic). If you like the tone of this fic, check out "child of rage" (it's a tv movie, and it is on youtube) or pm me and I might be able to help you with you evil-child-entertainment needs.


	17. Chapter 17: HPPD

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Seventeen)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None.

**Warnings:** Dark themes; violence; missing children/implied child abuse, lots of Reid angst...

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish (2008-ish), is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.

**Author's Note:** Please review. Reviews are kicks-in-the-pants for writers that tend to procrastinate.

* * *

Immediately after the conference call with Lise Miller's- Elle's- maternal uncle Gregory Miller, Reid retreated to the little table in the bullpen that served as his desk. He pulled out a pad of yellow, lined paper and a pen and began to write down everything he could remember of his time with Elle, anything he could remember at all, all in note form, bullet form. A few minutes later there was movement and talk behind him, and a minute or so after that, he felt a hand on his shoulder and spun around.

"Reid?" It was Morgan, staring at him with warm, concerned eyes.

"I'm making a list of everything I can remember about her, Morgan. I need to write it down. What did the uncle say about sending us her stuff?"

Reid had asked, shortly before the conference ended, if Gregory Miller had anything of Elle's- any previous possessions of the little girl's, or any home movies or photographs. At about that time Reid had began to feel eerily unwell and the room had seemed to retract and expand, shimmering strangely and he'd felt a sudden rush of panic. He'd gotten up and retreated, willing his heart to beat normally and for the crazy waving wall to slow down, become solid again. At his desk, he kept his eyes focused on the paper, and it looked strange, too, but it wasn't quite as overwhelming as trying to take in a room all at once and at least if he was writing, he felt like he was doing something productive.

"He said he would look through the old photo albums and videos, see if he could find anything. Said he didn't think there was anything, but that he had some of his sister's home movies and no doubt Lise would be on at least a few of them."

"When is he going to send them?" Reid said quickly, eyes darting up to Morgan's, then back to the paper.

"Kid? You okay?"

Reid nodded, but it wasn't a very convincing nod.

"What did the doctor say?" Morgan said, a touch softer, a touch quieter.

"Uh... you know. My brain is reacting, most likely, to whatever drugs I was force fed and is in some kind of withdrawal, and it is impossible to know when the effects will subside or even if they will subside, or if the visual and spatial distortions, the time distortions are permanent, something called HPPD- that is, Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder. I haven't had much time to research it, and what I did research throughly creeped me out, because, I mean... I can't feel this dreamy and crazy all the time. I am not a danger to others, but my reaction time is off, and no way I can drive like this-" Reid was talking extremely quickly, trying to tell Morgan everything without drawing it out. Morgan nodded.

"Hotch know?"

"Yeah, I told him. I can't have a gun in the field while it persists, and obviously I can't drive in this state," Reid blinked hard. Blinked even harder and rubbed at his eyes. The sense of everything being 3-D was starting to fade on him. He was looking down at his own hands writing with a pen on paper, but everything looked flat, like a photograph, and the edges were indistinct.

"Kid, slow down. You're breathing too hard. You feel odd right now? Right this second?"

Reid nodded miserably, then turned back to look at Morgan with haunted, glassy eyes. "Yeah. I do. What if... what if this never goes away? What if it is permanent?"

"Brains heal. They adapt. They change. You know that." Morgan said gently, hoping that his words would calm his friend, but they seemed to have the opposite effect.

"Yes, brains change, but not always for the better. Consider young children who suddenly stop making progress and develop what we call autism- for no known reason. Or brains that change themselves right into permanent schizophrenic psychosis, Morgan or-"

"It won't be permanent, kid, and you're not helping yourself by thinking the worst. You're scaring yourself. Everything might seem off, but you know what reality is. You sound like you do."

"Yes, I am not psychotic. But visually and in terms of time... those are off."

Morgan was silent for a moment, thinking, but there wasn't much he could say. Finally: "Want me to ask Garcia what she can find? That way you can focus on this case and she can probably be a little bit more objective about long term results and stuff. You start researching this and you are likely to spin off into other scary possibilities. But Garcia can find just as much valuable information online as you can, Reid, and she can act as a filter?"

Reid considered this, head bent over the pad of paper, one hand still rubbing at his eyes. He wasn't writing anymore. The writing had been a ruse. Finally, he nodded. Not a hard nod, just slight enough to be noticed.

"And kid?"

Reid looked up at him. Squinted. Morgan's face was rippling, was strange and wrong and not Morgan. Reid felt like he was looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Close and far away at the exact same time. Why people ever intentionally fucked with their brain chemistry with hallucinogens, Reid would never, ever understand. The things were nightmarish. There couldn't be anything much worse, Reid was sure of it, then losing your sense of what was _real_.

"It won't be permanent. Hold onto that. Try not to let your fear make life worse for you than it absolutely has to be. Worrying never helped anyone, not a soul."

"I know," Reid said quietly. Almost added that worrying didn't change anything, no, but sometimes the worst-case scenarios came true. Wanted to add that just because something wasn't helpful, didn't mean it was easy to stop doing.

"Hell, Reid, people can feel spaced out and trippy when they quit smoking because of the way nicotine affects serotonin transit. I bet you know much more about it than I do- but if cigarette withdrawal can make people feel derealized and strange, then hallucinogens are definitely going to have you a little bit off while your body responds and your brain heals itself. You have to know that."

"I've read about nicotine withdrawal inducing feelings of derealization," Reid said, licking his lips nervously. "But I always wondered how bad it really was. I mean... _cigarettes_?"

"Bad enough that Stephen King himself wrote about it in a short story. _Lunch at the the Gotham Cafe_, I think the story was called, if you want to go read it now. Been a while since I read any Stephen King. Based on his own experiences, I think. The spaciness, I mean, not the crazy waiter who attacks everyone with a butcher knife. If Stephen King writes about cigarette withdrawal, you know it's bad."

This got a small smile out of Reid. Morgan smiled back.

"And what you're going through is bound to be worse than nicotine withdrawal-"

"I know that. I just don't know it's not permanent." Reid's voice was shaky, filled with dread.

"I know," Morgan sighed. "Does anything help? Or make it worse?"

"Artificial lights-" Reid motioned the desk lamp to his left, "like this one make it worse. And being too hot. Not enough fresh air. Those all make it worse. Adequate sleep, fresh air, regular meals seem to help a little. Not much. But a little."

"Which just means that your system is really sensitive right now. To everything."

"Just tell me about how soon Gregory Miller thinks he can have those tapes sent out to us. Oh, and the kid's stuff from the White property? Is all that stuff in evidence?"

"I don't know. I can check with Hotch."

"Would you?" Reid's voice was tense. Morgan knew the kid was going to have a migraine in an hour if he kept squinting like that at the paper. He was already absently rubbing his temples, and his left hand was drumming on the fake wood formica surface of his "desk". Morgan made a decision, reached over and switched Reid's desk lamp off. The room was light enough without the lamp's 60 watt bulb burning away angrily, but Reid still whipped his head around, looking confused.

"Come on, Reid. Get up. I want you to go rest on the couch in the lounge. Go rest in there with the lights off for a while."

"I'm not an invalid, Morgan, and I have to work. We have to find this... child."

"I know you're not an invalid, Reid, but right now... right now I think you're sitting there thinking about scary possibilities that have nothing to do with this case. So please, kid. Go rest for a bit. Hell, I'll even sit in the dark with you and we can talk if you want. There is a window in there, fresh air. And that couch is pretty damn comfortable. I know. I've seen you asleep on it once or twice, myself."

Reid looked back up at Morgan, obviously torn.

"You have a headache, anyway, don't you?" Morgan asked gently.

"How did you know?" Reid said, rubbing across his forehead with his long, pianist's fingers. Morgan grinned good-naturedly. "I am a behavioral profiler, Reid. It's my job to notice these things. Come on. Get up. Go sit in the dark and I'll get you some excedrin."

Reid nodded and followed after his friend.

"Derek?" He said, when they were out of earshot of the rest of the team.

"Yeah?"

"You're sure... _this_... is going to go away?"

Morgan inhaled. Reid was getting awfully obsessive about whatever it was that was wrong in his head being permanent. He could say he didn't know, that nobody could know the answer to that, but he guessed that wasn't what Reid wanted or needed to hear right now. Reid needed comfort, he needed hope.

"Yes, I am sure it will go away. It's temporary, like most symptoms induced by drugs. Even withdrawal syndromes for most people, even those eventually go away. You'll be fine."

Reid nodded silently, followed Morgan into the lounge. Two large windows ran along the outer wall and the "fresh air" came in from the direction of the BAU's parking lot, but at least the air was fairly cool and wasn't stuffy. Morgan dropped the venetian blinds down and steered Reid to the ancient, ugly but all-too-comfortable orange couch they had all used as a bed at one time or another. There was also a love seat in the room, against the other wall, a desk with a sink, a mini fridge, a microwave, a pepsi machine and a laminated sign Derek Morgan was sure was posted above most public sinks in most offices_: Please clean up after yourself, your mother doesn't work here._

Morgan wasn't sure who had put it up, but the sign had been up for years. Written on the shiny, laminated surface of the sign in black indelible marker was the childish response: "I'll make a mess if I want to!" Morgan had always wondered about the sign, not just where it originated from, but also, who had written that juvenile graffiti on it. While the BAU worked out of the bullpen, other agents and even friends and relatives all had access to this lounge at different times.

An all-purpose bottle of extra strength Excedrin usually rested with the washed coffee mugs above the sink and, as expected, Morgan found the bottle. Shook two pills into his hand and filled a mug with tap water. He brought the painkillers and water to Reid, handed them to his younger friend.

"You promise you will come get me when the home videos arrive, right? Or when Hotch lets you know about any of the stuff from the White house?"

"I promise, kid, second anything changes that I think you might want to know about, I'll come and get you. Let the painkillers work. Chill for a bit. Nobody expects you to be 100 percent right now."

Before Reid could say anything more, Morgan shut the door. He went back to his own "desk", grabbed a pen and some tape and a piece of paper from the copier and wrote "Not feeling well, please use the lounge on floor 2" on the paper, went back to the lounge and taped up the sign. Reid needed every second he could to destress. Kid was running on fumes and looked fit to collapse or panic or puke or all three.

Morgan was pretty sure that the only reason Hotch hadn't sent Reid home on a medical leave was because he knew how scared Reid was of anything going wrong with his brain or his mind, and wanted to keep an eye on him.

* * *

"Come in," Hotch said from behind his office door. Morgan entered. Hotch looked up at him.

"Reid is having some problems," Morgan said softly. He knew Hotch knew already, but Hotch probably didn't know just how scared Reid was.

"I know," Hotch said simply. He knew Morgan was here because he was concerned about the agent he called "kid".

"He worries his sense of... unreality... might be permanent. Says he can't drive in this state, that he's going to have to relinquish his gun?"

Hotch nodded. Looked as if he was about to say something. Stopped.

"What is it, Hotch?"

"I haven't officially recorded anything Reid has told me about his... current state of mind. With his past Dilaudid history I feel a formal recognition of his current symptoms, which I have no doubt are a temporary withdrawal from whichever drugs he was dosed with- might be viewed as a sign of psychiatric instability by those above me who do not personally know Reid."

"They might be worried about his stability as field agent?" Morgan asked, voice dropping just a bit. Hotch nodded somberly.

"Even if it was made clear that his current symptoms are the result of hallucinogen withdrawal?"

"We don't know for certain that Reid was drugged with hallucinogens," Hotch said simply.

"Hotch..." Morgan started, annoyed, but Hotch cut him off.

"Morgan, I _know_. But a hunch is not going to look like anything but a hunch on paper. The people who make the most powerful decisions about Reid are not the ones who know him. They also aren't involved with this case."

"So you haven't recorded anything he has told you about his symptoms? Not officially?"

Hotch shook his head. He looked more pensive than usual. Aaron Hotchner was a man who was wired to follow standard operating procedure. "No."

"And that's why you haven't sent Reid home? Why he hasn't been discharged on medical leave?"

Hotch nodded.

"You have a special bond with Reid. He trusts you... like a big brother, I would say. Right now, I am adopting a wait-and-see policy regarding what Reid has disclosed to me. Obviously, I don't need to tell you the legal problems the bureau could face if Reid decompensates and I had reason to suspect it. If his symptoms persist past this case I will have to officially document them, but there is a small margin of forgiveness here, right now. I want him here for his own good, but also to keep an eye on him. Where is he right now?"

"He was looking a little loopy. I got him to go lie down in the lounge," Morgan said.

"Good. Can you check and see with Reid if he has a go-bag here? If so, I would appreciate if you tell him I want him to stay here for the immediate future. He can sleep in the lounge."

"You can't tell him yourself?" Morgan asked, but he already knew the reason why Hotch was delegating this responsibility to him.

"Reid, as you pointed out, is scared. And though I feel we have developed a personal relationship, he is still bound to view me as the disciplinarian I am. I don't want him to think I am asking him to stay here because I don't trust him or because I think he is mentally or emotionally unstable. He doesn't need the stress."

"There is another reason, though, too. Right Hotch? You officially ask him to stay here, you officially have to write it down?"

Hotch nodded, eyes sharp as a falcon's.

Morgan nodded and turned to go.

"I take it I don't need to tell you this entire conversation was off the record?" Morgan said, at the door. Hotch smiled. Someone who didn't know him wouldn't have called it a smile, but it was. The corners of his mouth curled just the tiniest degree. There was a somewhat amused light in his eyes.

"Morgan, for the same reasons I am not predisposed to officially record Reid's symptoms and behavior in his file right now... if you could speak to the rest of the team... just the basics?"

Morgan nodded. He would fill the others in. Though no doubt they already had some idea of what Reid was experiencing. They were profilers, after all. And Reid, for his part, wasn't entirely reserved about inquiring their opinions about the permanency of his condition.

"Reid is going to be fine," Hotch said then, with the commanding, powerful certainty of someone who has previously been a district prosecutor. Morgan nodded and slipped out of the office, shutting the door quietly.

* * *

"Hey, baby doll," Morgan said brightly, popping into the wonderful world of computers that Garcia called both home and work. She smiled at him with that huge, neon smile of hers.

"Studmuffin," she acknowledged playfully, tilting her head in mock flirtation.

"I'm here about Reid. Hotch... and I.. Hotch asked me to talk to you guys," Morgan started, not sure how to say what needed to be said without sounding entirely too shady.

"About Reid's current symptoms?" Garcia asked, and some of the levity bled out of her features, her voice. Morgan nodded.

"Yeah. Hotch officially doesn't want to record Reid's... concerns... right now because of the possible long-term effects such a formal admission might have for Reid's career but..."

"Morgan? I get it," Garcia said with knowing eyes. She looked sad for a moment, before brightening up. "How can I help our little genius?"

"Reid is driving himself crazy right now with what-if type thinking. He is obsessed he might have something called HPPD- that is, Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder- and I could see him tailspinning out obsessively about it. I told him I'd ask you to do some research, see what you could find that might be pertinent to his experiences. In other words, see what you can dig up that isn't so scary the kid will be paralyzed with fear?"

Garcia nodded. Her fingers sounded like machine gun fire on the keyboard.

"I will look up this HPPD thing you speak of," Garcia said brightly, almost jovially.

"Reid... he's gone a little obsessive right now, so anything scary or that hints at permanent dysfunction..." Morgan started unnecessarily. Garcia looked up at him, half amused, half sad.

"Morgan? I get it. I know. I have dealt with our eerily intelligent little Mensa Monkey before and I will censor the scary stuff out as I see fit."

"Thanks, Mama." Morgan said, grinning widely. He turned back to Garcia, the grin even bigger. "Mensa Monkey?"

Garcia just laughed.

* * *

**Okay, review**. Like I said, each review gets 5 paragraphs written within 24 hours of me reading said review. Capitalize on my obsessive nature. Review today. Also, I just have to tell you guys... I love you. Not because you give me compliments (although, come on, who doesn't like compliments?), but because when you give constructive criticism it is actually helpful. I once took a creative writing class in my late teens (maybe early twenties) and the old schoolmarm type that ran it ripped my stuff apart, not for poor grammar or spelling but for creative freedoms I took, which didn't fit her "Tess of the D'urbervilles" notion of what fiction was. Apparently ghosts can't bleed (news to me). My ego was still as fragile as a baby's soft spot back then and I ditched writing for a few years, so thanks for the constructive criticism. It actually is constructive. I'm also fully aware just how insanely over-the-top unrealistic this story is. It was started at a different time in my life, and I am pretty sure the first 15 chapters of it weren't written by a sober person. ;)


	18. Chapter 18: Cockroach Messenger

**This is my Last Resort (Chapter Eighteen)** by Lexikal

**Spoilers:** None.

**Warnings:** Dark themes; violence; missing children/implied child abuse, lots of Reid angst...

**Summary:** Spencer Reid, third season-ish (2008-ish), is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.

**Author's Note:** 4 reviews for the last chapter as of 11:23 p.m. P.S.T. on Saturday, March 2, 2013. That's 20 paragraphs I promised to write or 100 sentences (plus whatever else sneaks in there, paragraph wise), and I am loosely defining a paragraph as 5 sentences (or more). I checked the American greyhound website and apparently there is a stop in Fredericksburg, VA. The closest stop to Tappahannock is Richmond, Virginia, where Elle is supposed to have escaped from, I believe. (I am pretty sure I dropped at least one hint that the hospital was in Richmond). So going up to Fredericksburg only to come right back down is a very convoluted way to get where she is going, but it's so complicated nobody would think she'd do it... so there is that. I think she is just in a hurry to escape and feels threatened. The kid is six and a half, after all. I don't actually know if you can catch a greyhound in Fredericksburg that goes to Richmond: I don't live in the US, have never been to Virginia (actually, maybe I have...) and do not work for greyhound. ;) While there are aspects of this fic that bug me, I do like the idea of a woman going into a violent, psychotic rage out of guilt after losing her baby and killing a couple to steal their young child as a proxy, only to kidnap an exceptionally intelligent child with an attachment disorder and a violent streak herself. It's the perfect clusterfuck. The general information about the small town of Tappahannock, VA is accurate, near as I can tell. Oh, and the cockroach detail in this chapter? Heh. Read the author's note at the end if you want to know more...

* * *

By 4 p.m. EST (Eastern Standard Time), about the same time Reid was falling into a headachy, distracted sleep, Elle was boarding a bus in Fredericksburg, Virginia and heading back to Richmond, Virginia. She had escaped a small hospital just outside of Richmond less than 18 hours ago, but the journey north had allowed her to work on her plan. She'd go to the Richmond Greyhound and then use two quarters to call Uncle Bucky (she had only seen him twice since Mommy and Daddy had "saved" her all those years ago, and he wasn't even Mommy's real brother, but none of that mattered) and, if he couldn't come get her, she'd steal some lousy brat's bicycle and bike there. It was about 45 miles from Richmond to Tappahannock, as the crow flies, which meant that with the nearly 60 bucks she had from the cookie jar robbery, she might get there in about a week. She'd bike as much as possible, keep to back roads and behind trees. Elle had seen people on TV "hitchhike", and it looked like fun, but as far as the world was concerned she was a child, and children had no rights and could not be outside without their owners. Most people referred to these owners as "parents" or "guardians", but a sugar-coated name was just that, and legally, what those parents and guardians were was owners. Kids had no rights, so if one was seen trying to hitch a ride, that was seen as suspicious (sort of like a slave trying to run away from a cotton picking plantation back in the olden days), and one of the drivers would no doubt pull out his or her ugly, dumb cell phone and call the police and then that would be that. Police were the worst of the worst, fucking fascist Nazis. So hitchhiking was out. Buying stuff in stores was okay- as long as the store wasn't too far from a sidewalk and other kids were around and it wasn't too late at night and the kid in question didn't buy too much food all at once or attempt to buy certain "adult" items like alcohol or strike anywhere matches or lighter fluid- but most other adult-enjoyed liberties were denied to children, because adults were evil, nasty pieces of shit that liked to dominate everyone and everything in their paths. It was one of the main reasons they had invented technologically advanced weapons like the nuclear bomb. If they couldn't make people do what they wanted with words alone, then they killed them with powerful, amazingly sophisticated weapons. That was what the world called maturity, and it was a world Elle wanted no part of, thank you very fucking much.

This greyhound was nice, Elle had to admit. Much nicer than the ugly city transit bus she'd been on all day. Bright blue, padded seats with little grey squiggles on them. No pull cords, because the bus stopped at certain, set destinations. There was even a bathroom at the back of the bus, so you could poop or pee if you had to even while the bus was in motion. Nice touch. Elle mounted the stairs and proceeded through the aisles, to the seats at the back. Luckily they were open. People were crazy for not wanting seats at the back, right next to the portable bathroom. Elle sank into the seat, pulled the Dora the Explorer backpack off, pulled one of the cans of Pepsi out of her bag, and then zipped the backpack up. She lay with her back up against the wall, small feet dangling over three seats, staring gloomily out the window. She popped the thumb tap on the Pepsi and took a sip. The pepsi was warm by now, and usually Elle hated warm soda pop, but warm pepsi was better than no pepsi, and besides, she was dizzy. She'd felt dizzy and a little cold all day. Everything felt like it was spinning, and it wasn't fun, and even though she was pretty sure her gunshot wound had stopped bleeding she knew that the stupid t-shirt she'd stolen was covered with blood underneat the rain slicker. The doctors had removed the bullet and stitched her up, but she was pretty sure she'd torn something jumping in and out of bed like that, jumping into the back of the truck bed and then back out, all that creeping around. She'd been told after the surgery that she'd lost a lot of blood and that her insides needed her to stay still and get lots of sleep in order to heal.

Too late for following doctors orders on that one.

Elle had defied the stupid doctors, and her stupid parents. She smiled, despite the ache in her abdomen and the dizzy, vertiginous feeling of movement and silently willed the bus to start moving. People were still getting on, sitting down, storing small bags in overhead compartments, talking to one another... Not many people, though. Elle counted nine. Only nine. She closed her eyes and daydreamed the engine inside of the bus. Saw the internal combustion engine begin a series of tiny explosions. Saw the bus wheels start to turn. As she was imagining the black exhaust coughing out through the exhaust pipes, the bus, indeed, began to move. Elle heard a phrase from a television commercial run through her mind- "rack and pinion steering"- and tried to visualize the rack, tried to visualize the pinion. She had no idea what either of these parts of the car or bus were, though, except that if they were related to steering they were probably connected to the steering wheel in some way. But out of context, they were nothing. She took another sip of her pepsi and leaned over to look out the window at the trees flashing by.

After 20 minutes of the greyhound's easy, rhythmic coasting over the macadam and the slightly hushed sounds of other people's stupid conversations, Elle fell asleep, half-full can of pepsi still in her hand.

* * *

Spencer Reid had finally drifted off. The combination of fresh air, a dark (or at least dimmed) room, freedom from prying eyes and the excedrin had helped calm him enough to spin away into la la land, as had Morgan's somewhat forceful assurance that the hiccups in his sense of "realness" were just that- hiccups. The case had more or less flatlined, though. There were police out looking for Dolores White and the missing kids (Julie and Connor and Mark and any other kid currently escaping his memory) but so far, nothing. The team was trying to profile Dolores White more "completely", were playing phone tag with the hospital she had lost her baby at- the real Elle- the one who had died. There were images of all the kids and Elle and Dolores on all the local and national news stations, almost hourly. So far, nothing. They were in that horrible span of time where all leads seem to take the journeyer back to the beginning of his journey.

"You realize that this child is not the devil of the devils nor the angel of the angels, but just a child, just a creature that is scared of your tactics." The voice that told Reid this was very old, and very confident and very calm. Reid blinked and opened his eyes, and the room rippled. On one of the walls there was movement, something two inches long and red-brown. It scuttled out of his field of vision, then popped up even closer in his visual range. Running towards him at quite a decent clip for such a small animal.

"I am a waterbug and I know the way the minds of the left-behind think," The insect told him. It was at his feet on the linoleum in front of the couch. Reid squinted at it. He knew he had to be dreaming, but everything felt so incredibly real that, if he had been forced to admit to his Higher Self, his soul, that he was dreaming, he wouldn't have been able to say it with any assurance or confidence.

"You are a water bug?" Reid asked dumbly. The cockroach gazed at him with shiny, black compound eyes. Eyes that had seen the big bang, the unfolding of the universe and the atrocities of the millennia, and probably not in that order. Eyes of the Godhead, if not God, Himself.

"I am a water bug from the planet of hydrogen and oxygen, which you call Earth and which I call home. I am an American cockroach, your friend in this life, and my name is _Periplaneta americana_. You can trust me not to tell you bogus bullshit, genius gentleman. I know where the child with the old soul you are seeking is going. She is going to the trees and the water, where the tide of the river ebbs and flows and where the children can scream but not be heard by the trees."

Reid squinted again at the cockroach, at the tiny thing with a voice as loud and commanding as a strong, healthy man's. The cockroach had a pleasant, lilting voice, maybe a little British. The voice of a British scholar. The voice of William S. Burroughs, if William S. Burroughs had been raised in England and had done fewer drugs.

"She is going to the water and the trees? Where the river tide ebbs and flows? You have to give me more than that!" Reid pressed.

The cockroach stared at him with its unknowable, mysterious eyes. Its antennae twittered in what appeared to be a light breeze, and at the moment, Reid heard the venetian blinds hanging over the windows rustle and bang lightly against the wall.

"The one you call Elle is scared of monsters. She will become a monster if no action is taken. She will also become a monster if too much action is taken. Your type scare her. Your needles and your drugs and what you call medicine. To her, you are dangerous and like any animal that has been hurt by others, she has become vicious and deeply angry. Inside she is a child, but in her mind she is a lone soldier. She is heading towards the trees and the water. Where the river tide ebbs and flows."

"The trees and the water, I know, you told me that... trees and the water, where? River, where?"

"I am a water bug, and I come from the river. Don't wait long, scholarly Samaritan of the System. The child never meant to harm you. Not really. Not in the place where the soul learns and makes plans for each precious human life. She merely deigned to show you. I was once an Algonquian but now I need to be a water bug."

"Show me what?" Reid said with exasperation, vaguely aware that if he wasn't sleeping he was full-out hallucinating, and not caring one whit.

"Her reality. Take that as you will. For I am the cockroach, the bringer of truths, but not the bringer of interpretations." That said, the animal stared at Reid a second longer, before turning and scuttling away. Half way across the room it hit some quantum interdimensional portal and disappeared, leaving a ripple in the air that waved like a heat mirage.

"I don't know what any of that means!" Reid called after the roach reproachfully -reproach for the roach- but it was gone.

Reid felt a sharp pain pierce his left temple then, and suddenly, louder, but entirely inside his head, came the roach's almost-playful voice: _Where the River ebbs and flows, where the trees can't hear the screams, genius gentleman._

Reid let out a gaspy hiss of pain, scrunched his eyes shut and sat up on the couch. Wincing, body rocking ever so slightly. His heart was hammering hard against his sternum, like a furious animal that wants to break out of its cage. The door opened then.

"Kid?"

Reid knew without looking that it was Morgan. He could hear Morgan approaching. "Reid? You okay, man?" He felt a warm, callused hand on his shoulder. Even through the fabric of his cardigan, he knew that hand. The hand squeezed his shoulder reassuringly.

"Headache," Reid moaned, and licked his lips. "Where the river ebbs and flows, where the trees can't hear the screams... genius gentleman."

"Reid?" Morgan queried again, and this time the concern was ratcheted up a few notches. Reid licked his lips once more, blinked rapidly. Rubbed at his eyes. The pain in his head was gone.

"Uh... nothing. I was just dreaming," Reid stood, stared around the lounge groggily, eyes narrowed into slits, checking out each corner and shadowy place. Morgan followed the darting trail of Reid's eyes but couldn't see what the kid was seeing.

"You were dreaming. Or... something else?" Morgan questioned gently. "Kid? Look at me."

Reid met the warm, brown eyes of his friend. So much compassion and strength in those eyes, and he knew Morgan loved him the way a good big brother loves a devoted little brother, but Morgan wouldn't understand quantum cockroaches. Reid wasn't sure he understood them, himself.

"What did I just say? Something about a river?" Reid said tiredly, and palmed his eyes with his hands, rubbed at his face. "I gotta wake up. I need some coffee. I feel like I've been drugged..."

"You said: _where the river ebbs and flows, where the trees can't hear the screams, genius gentleman._ Why? What's going on?"

"I need some coffee. I need Garcia." Reid was finally standing. He crossed over to the lounge's little sink area, pulled a mug (it read "Niagara Falls, Canada" on it and featured a colourful illustration of water shooting over the falls) out from the cupboard over the sink and filled it with the dregs of the coffee pot. Morgan made a face.

"Reid, man, that coffee has to be three days old-"

Reid shrugged and downed it anyway, smacking his lips. After a delayed span of two seconds he made a face and spit what was left in his mouth back into the cup with a scowl.

"More like three weeks." Reid amended and returned the cup to the sink, rinsed it clean.

* * *

"Garcia, I need your help," Reid said, gently opening the door to Garcia's computer lab. Garcia looked up, smiled, nodded and looked over at Morgan who wore a "don't ask" expression.

"This is probably going to sound kind of weird but-" Reid began, not quite making eye contact with the tech.

"Oh, sugar, I specialize in weird," Garcia said tolerably. "And I doubt it is as weird as you think."

"I had a dream, and... I can't explain it, but my dream... in the dream, I was given clues to where Elle might be heading, but they were in code, I guess you could say." Reid paused, analyzed Garcia's facial expression. So far she didn't look dismayed or put or or annoyed. Reid nodded to himself and continued.

"I was told to look at rivers. My guess would be rivers on this side of the country, close to the original White residence. Small communities near rivers in Virginia. Can you bring those up?"

Garcia clicked some keys and a map of Virginia appeared on her screen. There were a few more clicks and large red dots stood out along the Eastern seaboard, small river communities not quite flush with the Atlantic. She looked over at Reid, waiting for directions.

"Um... the dream said something about the river tide. The ebb and flow of the tide, or the river tide..." Reid trailed, realized he sounded ridiculous. As if reading his mind, Garcia glanced up at him, smiling gently.

"I'm going to need a little more than that, cutie. That's a little too obscure, even for me."

Reid nodded, leaned closer to the screen and scanned the red dots and the names listed next to them.

"_I was once an Algonquian but now I need to be a water bug_," Reid mumbled to himself distractedly. Garcia looked at him again, a look of confusion but Reid was looking inwards and missed the questioning look. His right pointer finger tapped on her computer screen, on one of the glowing red circles.

"Tappahannock," Reid murmured to himself. "Garcia, what is the origin of that town's name? _Tappahannock_? Can you find that out?"

"Already on it, " Garcia shot back. "It says here the name Tappahannock is of Algonquian origin and means "town on the rise and fall of the water". The water being referred to is no doubt the Rappahannock river, which Tappahannock is situated almost directly on top of. Does that help you?"

"_Where the river ebbs and flows_," Reid muttered to himself, brow creasing. The dream- if that is what it had been- was sliding away in his head, scuttling away like cockroaches when hit with light. "Where the children can scream but not be heard by the trees... Garcia, that town? Tappahannock? Is it particularly... dense with trees? Or..."

Garcia nodded, knowing what he was asking, and hammered once more on the keyboard. A screen of images of Tappahannock, Virginia appeared.

"There are rural areas of Tappahannock, yes. The town is the oldest of Essex County, Virginia and was originally known as Hobbs Hole, after a long-time-dead, old-time-man named Jacob Hobbs who established a trading post way back when in... 1682. He did better than our friend, John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, who landed there in 1608 and was driven away by the local Native American tribes. Oh, and to answer your question? There appear to be some very tree-y spots, indeed."

"Can you..." Reid started, then realized he hadn't consciously worked out what he wanted to ask her yet. "Is there any way you can sort rural residences? The most rural? And closest to the river?"

"I am on it," Garcia said. With a few deft keystrokes the town of Tappahannock was enlarged and 10 blinking yellow lights stood out on the screen.

"These ten residences are farthest from each other and from any man-made disturbances, like pesky paved roads with nosey tourists. This house- if you can call it that- is farthest from all the others, and as far as secluded in Tappahannock, Virginia goes, it is the most Overlook Hotel-y. It gets electricity, but not even any phone lines," Garcia was tapping the screen where she wanted Reid to look.

"Overlook Hotel?" Reid looked confused.

"Reference to the Kubrick masterpiece _The Shining_, my love, and not at all pertinent."

"Who owns it?" Reid asked, eyes glued to the screen.

"Already on it and..." Garcia went silent for a moment. "This is either a really weird coincidence or you, Spencer Reid, are developing into an uber precognitive dreamer. This marvelous little shack in the middle of nowhere is owned by a lucky gentleman by the name of Buckley White." Garcia made a few more keystrokes. "He is mentally challenged and works as a local tourist in town, where he spends most every day. Apparently Buckley is too hard to say, and everyone calls him Bucky or Buck. He has a tested IQ of 77 and... I am not getting anything on any family he may have. His family, if he has one, has been sealed, along with his juvenile records. Four years ago he made the front page of the local paper for catching a fish called a black drum which weighed in at a whopping 65.1 pounds and was an astonishing 50 inches long... caught in the Rappahannock river, on a 16 pound test line. For what it's worth."

"Can you unseal them? His records?" Reid asked, frowning.

"Not without a court order..." Garcia said, frowning back in sympathy.

Reid opened his mouth to say something. Shut it. Sighed with exasperation. "You say he is employed as a tourist? Are there any more details?"

"Buckley White appears to sell hand-made apple-head dolls on the side of the road, when he is not doing odd jobs- under the table, it looks like- for folks in town. Everything from weed whacking to cutting the grass to washing cars. Some light janitorial work in Tappahannock's downtown district... if you can call it a downtown district. Oh, and he sells smoked fish- black drum, croaker, spanish mackeral- to the local grocers. I would bet his smoked fish and fish jerky and other pescetarian delights bring in the majority of his income."

"The address?" Reid asked, but Garcia simply nodded her head.

"I am printing you out the address of his property, the addresses of the grocers and markets he sells fish jerky and all things fishy to and the driving directions, as well as any and all available information on Bucky White himself."

"Thanks, Garcia." Reid said, waiting for the printer to spew out his information.

When he had the papers in his hand, Reid glanced over at Morgan, who hadn't said a word during the entire exchange.

"Now I have to convince Hotch that this Bucky White is someone related to Dolores White and Elle is on her way there."

"Shouldn't be too hard," Morgan said after a moment. "Dream, hallucination or something else... something led you to this guy. It was actually kind of spooky to watch, kid."

"Thanks," Reid said, following Morgan out of Garcia's computer lab and toward the direction of Hotch's office. "I think."

* * *

**Please review this chapter.** Oh, I could have had any insect- indeed, any animal- be Reid's little spiritual messenger in this chapter, but a few weeks (months?) ago I was sick for an extended period of time and let some dishes pile up in the sink. Not long after, I started noticing that I had attracted the patronage of a multitude of German cockroaches (_Blattella germanica_) to my kitchen. Unbeknownst to me, these little buggers got into a rather fancy coffee machine I had, laid their eggs, and stayed there. I couldn't figure out where they kept coming from, until one day, I went to fill the back of the coffee maker up with water and a horde of them scattered out (much like the soot sprites in "My Neighbour Totoro")! Needless to say, that coffee maker was thrown away (I only drink a cup or two a week, anyway) but today, I noticed a straggler roach in the kitchen and bent to pick him (her?) up, to carry outside. I hate killing anything, even roaches. Anyway, the roach got loose and about 5, 10 minutes later I felt crawling on my chest and arm... and the roach ran out of the sleeve of my shirt and disappeared across my computer desk. And that is why the weird little messenger in this chapter is a roach and not a dung beetle or a sewer rat or lady bug or something else. I made it an American cockroach because they are bigger, and when it comes to spooky interdimensional insects telling you things, slightly bigger is always better. ;)


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